Hundreds of pilot whales have been stranded at Farewell Spit in New Zealand, and now volunteers are racing to rescue the remaining surviving whales. About 275 of the whales had already died when they were found on Friday. Cheree Morrison, a magazine writer, and editor was the first to discover the beached whales after she heard soft cries and sighs coming from the beach. It wasn't until dawn when she realized just how massive the carnage was.
Within hours hundreds of volunteers rushed to Farewell Spit to save the remaining 140 or so surviving whales. The incident is considered to be one of the worst whale strandings in the country's history. Scientists still do not know what the exact cause is behind whales beaching themselves. According to BBC, this sometimes happens whenever whales become old, sick, injured or make navigational errors.
Sometimes if a single whale is beached it will send out distress signals to the rest of its pod, who then become stranded themselves as a result. The carcasses of both adult and baby whales could be seen strewn of places three or four meters deep, and spanned hundreds of yards.
According to Project Jonah, a volunteer rescue group, a total of 416 whales were stranded. Volunteers were able to re-float 50 of the surviving whales when the high tide came, while the other 80 to 90 whales remained stranded on the beach. They then formed a human chain in the water to keep the whales from swimming back and stranding themselves again.
The volunteers returned to Farewell Spit on Saturday morning to attempt to re-float the whales. The human chain formed by the locals was a success as they managed to re-float 100 of the surviving whales. Both the high tide and a new pod of pilot whales aided tremendously in the rescue efforts. According to CBC News, Farewell Spit is the site of previous strandings, but the scale of the most recent one was a complete shock.
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