A day after 230 whales were found stranded on the wild and remote west coast of Australia’s island state of Tasmania, only 35 were still alive despite rescue efforts set to resume Thursday. Half the pods of pilot whales stranded in Macquarie Harbor were believed to be still alive on Wednesday, Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment said. However, the surf was very bad overnight, Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service director Brendon Clark said.
“We condemned the animals yesterday as part of the preliminary assessment and identified those animals that had the best chance of survival out of the approximately 230 that were trapped. Today’s focus will be on rescue and release operations,” Clarke told reporters nearby. Strachan. “We have about 35 surviving animals on the beach … and the main focus this morning will be the rescue and release of those animals,” Clark added. The whales beached two years after the largest mass stranding in Australian history was discovered in the same port. About 470 long-finned pilot whales were found on September 21, 2020, stuck on sandbars. After a week-long effort, 111 of these whales were rescued, but the rest died. The entrance to the harbor is a notoriously shallow and dangerous channel known as Hell’s Gate. Local salmon farmer Linton Kringle helped with the 2020 rescue effort and said the latest challenge would be more difficult. “Last time they were actually in the harbor and it’s pretty calm and we could, kind of, tackle them there and we could get the boats to them,” Kringle said. “But just on the beach, you just can’t put a boat there — it’s too shallow, too rough. My thought would be to try to put them in a vehicle if we can’t swim them,” Kringle added. Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist who specializes in marine mammals, said it was too early to explain why the stranding happened. “The fact that we’ve seen similar species, at the same time, in the same location, repeating themselves in terms of stranding in the same spot might provide some kind of indication that there might be something environmental going on here,” Pirotta said. David Mintson, West Coast Council’s borough chief executive, urged people to stay clear. “Whales are a protected species, even when they die, and it is an offense to interfere with a carcass,” the environment department said. Fourteen sperm whales were discovered on Monday afternoon on King Island, part of the state of Tasmania in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania’s north coast. Marine scientist Olaf Meynecke of Griffith University said it was unusual for sperm whales to wash ashore. He said warmer temperatures could also change ocean currents and move the whales’ traditional food. “They’ll go to different areas and look for different food sources,” Meynecke said. “When they do that, they’re not in the best physical condition because they might be starving, so that might lead them to take more risks and maybe go closer to shore.” The pilot whale is notorious for stranding in massive numbers, for reasons that are not fully understood.
