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Australian rescuers free 11 whales after mass stranding in Tasmania: official

Australian rescuers yesterday saved 11 stranded whales by moving them by road to another beach and dragging them out to sea after a mass stranding in Tasmania, an official said.

A pod of 64 pilot whales, most of them females and calves, beached on Anthony’s Beach on the southern island of Tasmania on Saturday. Fifty-two of the giant animals died after the stranding but 12 surviving whales were looked after overnight by rescuers, Chris Arthur of Tasmania’s Parks and Wildlife Service said.

Rescuers placed nets around the animals, which measured between 3m to 5m and weighed up to 1.5 tonnes, yesterday morning and manually hauled them onto car trailers to take them to another beach.

“We used specially built car trailers, which we were able to put up to two whales in each. And we transported those animals 17km to Godfrey’s Beach,” Arthur said.

“We have successfully released 11 animals out to sea,” Arthur said. “The last one went out less than 20 minutes ago.”

While the possibility that the animals would strand themselves again could not be ruled out, he said, the hope was that they would instead join up with other pilot whales in the ocean. Some the whales have been tagged and aerial reconnaissance is planned to check on their progress.

“We have had a reasonable outcome. They will form a small pod. We have given them the best chance they have got,” said Arthur, a regional officer with the Tasmanian state parks and wildlife service.

This pod of whales, around one-third of them juveniles, were found stranded on Saturday along a stretch of Anthony’s Beach at Stanley on the island’s northwest coast, a site where repeated strandings have occurred in the past.

Pilot whales are among the smaller whales, typically up to about 5m in length and dark with a grey underbelly. Their relatively small size may have helped rescuers save them, environmentalists said.

Although most of the pod could not be saved, a team of around 65 people battled throughout much yesterday to move 12 survivors, including both adults and juveniles, 17km by road in trailers to nearby Godfrey’s Beach to try to return them to the sea. One whale died during the operation.

Mass strandings of whales occur periodically in Australia and New Zealand for reasons that are not entirely understood. Theories include disturbance of echo-location, possibly by interference from sound produced by human activities at sea, a spokeswoman for the environmental group Greenpeace said.

The state government said satellite trackers had been placed on some of the released whales and a reconnaissance plane would fly over the area today to check on the whales’ progress.
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