Nearly 240 pilot whales stranded and died on a remote New Zealand island. The marine mammals were lost on Pitt Island in the South Pacific, more than 800 kilometers off the east coast of New Zealand on Monday, the country’s conservation authority said today. About 240 pilot whales died on nearby Chatham Island on Saturday.
Some of the whales were dead when they arrived, and the rest should have been euthanized, said Dave Lundquist, a consultant to the agency. In the region, rescuers would not actively return marine mammals “because of the risk of shark attacks on humans and the whales themselves, so euthanasia was the most humane solution.” difficult, according to the agency Logística.
According to the whale protection organization Project Jonah, with a total of nearly 480 whales killed in just a few days, these were major strandings in the Pacific state.