39 beached whales rescued but 120 die

Rescuers refloated 39 pilot whales at high tide, but dozens more died today after a pod beached on a remote island off southern New Zealand.

Locals and conservation specialists frantically dragged, pushed and steered the surviving mammals from the 159 whale pod off the sand and into deep water.

By nightfall, the 39 whales had moved about 1.5 miles into open sea.

They were heading south away from the stranding site at Paterson’s Inlet near Oban, the only town on Stewart Island, 25 miles off the south coast of South Island.

“That was a very good result,” said Department of Conservation southern islands’ area manager Greg Lind.

“The 39 we got off were the only ones alive when the stranded pod was found around midday,” he added. ”Overseas, such refloat efforts are rarely successful.”

Some 80 people, mostly volunteers, worked throwing sea water on the beached mammals as they waited for the tide to turn so the refloat attempt could be launched.

Once back in the water the whales were herded by small boats from the beach into open water.

Volunteer helper Mrs Ballard said the rescue effort at times felt like a lost cause.

“You try rather than leaving them to die,” she said.

Rebecca Wilson-Jennings said people had an urge to help the stranded animals.

“It’s probably quite a primal thing to want to help another mammal,” she said.

Lind said a plane will fly over the area at daybreak to check that the survivors had not returned to the beach.

The stranded whales had probably been on the isolated beach for 18 hours before they were spotted and the rescue launched.

The dead whale carcasses will be left to rot on the beach which, he said, is rarely visited by local residents.

Stewart Island’s worst whale grounding was in 1998, when 320 whales swam ashore in remote Doughboy Bay and had to be killed.

Lind said local residents recall at least four stranding incidents on the beach over the past 40 years, the last one in 1973.