110 beached whales refloated in New Zealand

Conservation workers and volunteers used a high tide today to refloat about 110 pilot whales from a beach where they became stranded a day earlier on New Zealand’s South Island. At least 15 others died, a conservation official said.

Volunteers in the rescue included tourists from as far afield as China and Germany, many of whom had never seen whales before. Some of them were reminded of the New Zealand-made film Whale Rider about rescuing a stranded whale.

“It’s just like ’Whale Rider’ but probably without the happy ending,” English tourist Rebecca Archibald from Somerset, said, referring to the whales that died.

Archibald was helping to wet down a whale that was wrapped in a wet blanket to keep it cool.

The first whale beached itself early afternoon yesterday on the Farewell Spit sands in the northern part of the island and was followed by the rest of the pod of 10-to-16-foot-long whales and some calves.

“They’re several kilometres from the shore ... with three boats guiding them to open water,” Department of Conservation spokeswoman Trish Grant said by cell phone from the beach.

“It’s early times yet as to whether they make it out to sea or whether they turn back and restrand,” she said, adding it had been “a wonderful effort” by some 300 volunteers and department workers.

The whales had beached in two groups, one of 60 whales near the top of the beach and another of 63 whales further out.

Grant said at least 15 whales had died on the beach during the 24-hour ordeal.

The surviving whales, including some young calves, “are not in too bad shape really, considering their stressful time,” she said.

“It is quite a good outcome,” Grant said, adding conservation staff would check the beach later today and at first light to ensure the pod had made it safely back to open waters.

New Zealand has several mass whale strandings around its coast line each summer. The last time that a group of whales beached themselves in the Farewell Spit area was in 1998 when about the same number of whales were refloated.

Whale experts have been unable to explain why the mammals apparently swim into dangerously shallow waters.