99 pilot whales stranded at Farewell Spit

Date: 26 January 2012

99 pilot whales were stranded at the base of Farewell Spit in Golden Bay at 11am Monday 23 January on the outgoing tide.

Update: 9.30am Thursday 26 January

An inspection at first light this morning revealed that the pilot whales refloated yesterday have restranded themselves on Farewell Spit. The pod has stranded even further to the east than yesterday, making the chances of a successful refloat even more unlikely.

The whales have now been ashore for five high tides and have been twice refloated with the assistance of DOC staff and volunteers.

The whales are now in noticeably poor condition and there is a gale warning in force for this afternoon, meaning that an assisted refloat would not be possible. A decision has therefore been made to euthanize the surviving whales.

Update 9.30am Wednesday 25 January

The pod of pilot whales stranded at Farewell Spit did not refloat themselves last night. The whales are still in reasonable condition and a further attempt will be made to refloat the surviving 25 whales on the high tide at 11.30 this morning.

DOC is grateful to all of the volunteers who have assisted over the past two days.

Update 2.30pm Tuesday 24 January

The pod of 40 whales that remained stranded on the beach at Puponga this morning failed to refloat themselves on this morning's high tide.The whales have now restranded and rescuers will continue to keep them comfortable until nightfall. It is hoped that the whales will refloat themselves on the high tide at 11.30pm tonight.

The pod of approximately 17 whales that refloated themselves last night are now swimming well off shore and are not considered to be in imminent danger of danger of restranding.

Update 12.30pm Tuesday 24 January

Department of Conservation (DOC) staff and volunteers (including iwi, Project Jonah, local residents and holiday makers) attended to the whales during the afternoon and covered them in wet sheets to keep them comfortable. The whales were left at nightfall with the hope that they would refloat themselves on the 10.45pm high tide.

An inspection this morning revealed that 40 live whales remained stranded on the beach. Approximately 17 of the pod refloated themselves overnight and are now swimming in a south easterly direction and are hopefully out of danger. The remaining 40 stranded whales were refloated at 11am this morning and are currently milling around approximately 200 metres offshore. DOC is hopeful that these 40 will join the remainder of the pod in deeper water.

DOC wishes to thank all those who have assisted with the stranding.

No further volunteers are needed at this stage.

Information about whale strandings in the Nelson Marlborough region:

• Since 2007 there have been 42 dolphin and whale stranding incidents.
• 36 of those incidents involved single animals.
• There were 2 incidents with 2 animals, and one each of 25, 34, 84 - 183 animals in total.
• In that time 160 of the 183 animals were stranded live.
• They were of varying species which included long finned pilot whale, common dolphin, sperm whale, Gray's beaked whale and dusky dolphin.
• 110 of these animals were successfully refloated. The remaining 50 were either dead on arrival, died during the rescue event, or were euthanised - an overall 68% refloat success rate.

The 99 pilot whales that stranded at Farewell Spit this week are not yet included in the figures above.

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