Some 240 whales have died after being stranded on a beach in New Zealand’s remote Chatham Islands, in the second such incident in less than a week, official sources confirmed on Tuesday.
The New Zealand Ministry of Conservation said in a statement that it had teams on the ground at Waihere Bay, located on Pitt Island, about 840 kilometers from New Zealand’s South Island.
The ministry said the surviving whales were ultimately killed to “avoid further suffering” and also because of the risk of shark attack, both to humans and whales.
“This decision is never taken lightly, but in cases like this it is the most humane option,” Dave Lundquist, the ministry’s technical adviser for maritime affairs, was quoted as saying in the statement.
Lundquist further explained that Pitt is New Zealand’s “most remote uninhabited island”, making communications “limited and logistics challenging”.
This incident comes after 215 pilot whales also died on Saturday after being stranded on another beach in the Chatham Islands, where fewer than 800 people live.
These whales and other marine mammals are often stranded off the coast of southern Australia and New Zealand.
For the experts, consulted by the Spanish agency, this can occur due to diseases, navigation errors, tidal changes, extreme weather conditions or the persecution of predators.
At the end of September, more than 200 pilot whales died after running aground on a remote Tasmanian island in South Australia, in the same place where another 370 animals had lost their lives two years earlier.
Source: TSF
