Race against time to save 35 surviving whales after 200 die in mass stranding on Tasmanian beach
22 September 2022, 12:14 | Updated: 22 September 2022, 12:20
Rescue efforts are continuing for 35 surviving pilot whales on Ocean beach, near Strahan after Australia's second mass stranding in two days.
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Nearly 200 whales have died on the beach on the West coast after a pod of about 230 wales became stranded on Wednesday, but rescuers managed to return 32 animals to deeper water on Thursday.
Some whales were also stranded on a sand island flat inside Marcquarie Habour, south of the town.
Incident controller, Brendon Clark, said: “We still have three alive on the northern end beach, but because of access restrictions, predominantly tidal influences, we just haven’t been able to access those three animals safely today, but they’ll be our priority in the morning.
“We’ll be transitioning to carcass recovery and disposal operations throughout the course of the day.”
Clark said the exposed conditions on Ocean Beach contributed to the high death rate and that authorities were limiting volunteer involvement only to those with previous marine wildlife training or experience.
“We appreciate all of the offers and all of the goodwill that is expressed from the community. It’s more a matter of having a safe working environment and skilled and trained personnel.”
Authorities have asked vessel operators within Macquarie Harbour to look out for potential strandings at other sites. “We will be doing patrols ourselves both via air reconnaissance and also harbour sweeps via vessel,” Clark added.
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The mass stranding is the second in Australia in two days, 14 dead sperm whales - all juvenile males -washed ashore on Monday at King Island in Bass Strait.
“It’s quite alarming that these animals have stranded … at a similar time,” said Dr Olaf Meynecke, of Griffith University’s coastal and marine research centre, who added that the two events were probably not a coincidence:
“They’re feeding on similar prey, [such as] giant squid off the continental shelf”.
