Last Friday, an awful sight appeared on Chatham Island, located off the coast of New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean: a group of around 240 pilot whales washed up on the beach.
Then, another group pf 240 pilot whales washed up Monday on Pitt Island, a remote island with limited communication located in the same region, according to the New Zealand Department of Conservation.
Dave Lundquist, a technical advisor marine for the department, said some of the whales were dead on arrival. Others were euthanized to minimize suffering, as they could not be brought back into the waters surrounding the islands.
“We do not actively refloat whales on the Chatham Islands due to the risk of shark attack to humans and the whales themselves, so euthanasia was the kindest option” Lindquist explained. As of Wednesday, all of the stranded whales were deceased. Their bodies will be left to naturally decompose.
According to the International Whaling Commission, “pilot whales are the species most often involved in mass strandings throughout their range, with several well-documented incidents that have given rise to various theories about the cause of mass strandings.”
Possible reasons for the beached pilot whales include: accidents in navigation that lead animals to unexpectedly shallow waters, anomalies in the earth’s geomagnetic fields caused by solar storms, and impaired navigation in diseased individuals that lead the rest of the group astray. However, the last theory has been somewhat discredited, the International Whaling Commission said.
“Pilot whales are prolific stranders, and the animals’ behavior is not well understood,” said the New Zealand Department of Conservation. “This type of event is not uncommon on the Chatham Islands, with the biggest recorded pilot whale stranding was an estimated 1,000 whales at the Chatham Islands in 1918.”
“This is a sad event for the team and the community, with many people being affected by it,” the department said Thursday of the recent crop of beached whales.
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