Up to 145 pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in a remote part of New Zealand, with authorities yesterday saying that they made the “heartbreaking” decision to euthanize dozens that lay stricken on the shore.
The stranding was late on Saturday discovered by a hiker on Stewart Island, 30km off the southern coast of the South Island.
Half of the whales were already dead and due to the condition of the remaining whales and the remote, difficult-to-access location, the decision was made to euthanize the remainder.
Photo: EPA / DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION
“Sadly, the likelihood of being able to successfully refloat the remaining whales was extremely low,” said Ren Leppens, operations manager at the Department of Conservation on Stewart Island.
“The remote location, lack of nearby personnel and the whales’ deteriorating condition meant the most humane thing to do was to euthanize. However, it is always a heartbreaking decision to make.”
It was one of four strandings discovered on New Zealand shores over the weekend, which stretched department resources.
In the far north of New Zealand, eight pygmy killer whales were transported by truck to the east coast from the west, where sea conditions were too rough to refloat them.
Two of the pods had to be euthanized, but Daren Grover of marine conservation group Project Jonah said that the remainder were saved by transporting them by road to the more sheltered east coast 20km away.
“It’s highly stressful for the whales, but they’ll be using suitable padding to protect them,” he told Fairfax Media.
They were to be kept in a stream overnight and refloated at high tide this morning.
There were two other whale strandings over the weekend in New Zealand, where beachings are relatively common, with the conservation department responding to an average of 85 incidents every year, mostly of single animals.
A sperm whale which beached in Doubtless Bay died overnight on Saturday, while the body of a dead female pygmy sperm whale was found at Ohiwa on the west coast of the North Island.
Exactly why whales and dolphins strand is not fully known, but factors can include sickness, navigational error, geographical features, a rapidly falling tide, being chased by a predator or extreme weather.
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