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SYDNEY: Most of a pod of 470 pilot whales found stranded off Australia’s remote southern coast have died, authorities said Wednesday (Sept. 23), as rescuers struggled in icy waters and dim light to free those still they were alive.
The group, which is the largest stranded in the country’s modern history, was first seen on a wide sandbar during an aerial reconnaissance of the rugged Macquarie Harbor in Tasmania on Monday.
After two days of a difficult and dangerous rescue attempt, state marine scientists said that at least 380 of the long-finned pilot whales had died.
By late Wednesday, about fifty of the mammals were released, but experts said there was a high probability that they would return, as many did during the rescue attempt the day before, creating a grueling cycle for rescuers who did not they can work at night.
The forecast for the remaining 30 pilot whales stranded and still alive, a species of oceanic dolphin that grows up to 7 meters long and can weigh up to 3 tons, was grim.
“As time goes on, they get fatigued and their chances of survival diminish,” said Nic Deka, Incident Controller for the Parks and Wildlife Service. “We hope to rescue more, but increasingly our focus is what we do with the corpses.”
Whale rescue efforts are taking place at Macquarie Harbor in Tasmania, Australia, on September 22, 2020 in this image taken from social media. (Bilal Rashid via REUTERS)
The refloating process involves up to four or five people per whale wading waist-deep in icy water, attaching slings to the animals so they can be guided out of the harbor by a boat.
The stranding, about 200 km northwest of the state capital, Hobart, is the largest on record in modern Australia and one of the largest in the world, drawing attention to a natural phenomenon that remains a mystery to the scientists.
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“It certainly is an important event and of great concern when we potentially lose so many whales in a stranding event,” said Peter Harrison, a professor with the Southern Cross University Whale Research Group.
“Very often we can only really see them when there are poor outcomes, like this stranding event. More research is absolutely necessary to understand these whales in Australian waters.”
In 1996, 320 pilot whales appeared off the coast of Western Australia, in what was then reported to be the largest mass stranding in the country. Around 600 pilot whales washed up in nearby New Zealand in 2017.
