Nearly 500 pilot whales dead after stranding themselves on New Zealand beaches

Nearly 500 pilot whales have died in recent days after they stranded themselves on beaches in New Zealand.

The island country’s Department of Conservation confirmed that 477 whales died, 232 stranding themselves Friday about 500 miles east of New Zealand’s main islands in the Chatham Islands’ Tupuangi Beach, and another 245 Monday at Waihere Bay.

“This is one of the larger events for mass strandings in New Zealand,” the whale rescue nonprofit Project Jonah New Zealand said in a Facebook post Tuesday, noting that large strandings typically involve about 70 to 80 whales. “Sadly, the whales that survived the initial stranding were euthanized.”

A string of dead pilot whales line the beach at Tupuangi Beach, Chatham Islands, in New Zealand's Chatham Archipelago, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. (Tamzin Henderson/)

Noting that scientists are still trying to understand the “complex phenomena” of strandings, Project Jonah attributed the numbers of these recent incidents to pilot whales stranding together due to their “tight social bonds.”

Though the nonprofit tries to rescue whales “wherever appropriate and possible,” it noted that the location made doing so difficult due to “the inability to mobilize trained medics quickly (so as not to impact the whales welfare), and the risk of predators close to shore which pose a threat to both rescuers and whales.”

Roughly 200 pilot whales died in Australia two weeks ago as well, after the mammals stranded themselves on a beach in Tasmania.

With News Wire Services