Australian rescuers were yesterday racing against time to save 15 short-finned pilot whales after more than 150 of the migrating mammals beached on the country’s west coast.
Most of the whales had died after becoming stranded on dry land overnight, Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions incident controller Jeremy Chick said.
Authorities and trained volunteers were trying to save 15 whales in shallow waters.
Photo: AFP / Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions / Handout
The whales beached at Hamelin Bay, 315km south of the state’s capital, Perth.
While whales regularly get stranded on the coastal strip migrating between Antarctic feeding grounds in the south and warmer northern waters, where they raise their young, the large number this time is unusual.
Hamelin Bay Holiday Park manager Melissa Lay told reporters by the telephone that it was the second mass stranding she had witnessed in her 15 years in the area.
“There are some that are still alive, but barely,” Lay said. “The last time it happened, none survived.”
Locals and tourists were being warned to stay out of the water due to a likely increase in sharks attracted by the dead whales.
People there for the peak salmon fishing season were also advised to stay out of the shallows.
“It is possible the dead and dying animals will act as an attractant, which could lead to sharks coming close into shore along this stretch of coast,” the Western Australia Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development said in a statement.
The largest mass stranding of whales in the state occurred in 1996, when 320 long-finned pilot whales stranded themselves just north of Hamelin Bay.
Short-finned pilot whales are dark-colored with pinkish-gray undersides, travel in large numbers and often get stranded en masse, the conservation department said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS