Pilot Whales Stranded on New Zealand Beach Euthanized

Twenty seven of the 39 whales stranded on New Zealand's Farewell Spit have been euthanized.

Department of Conservation officials said that rescuers failed to get the beached whales back into deep water. About 12 of the marine creatures died due to natural causes while others were euthanized.

"We carefully weighed up the likelihood of being able to refloat them and get them safely back out to sea. But our staff, who have extensive experience in dealing with mass whale strandings in Golden Bay, determined that due to various factors it was unlikely they could be rescued," said John Mason, Golden Bay Conservation Services Manager

Pilot whale strandings are quite common in New Zealand. The latest pod of whales was first spotted in the shallow waters off Abel Tasman National Park Sunday afternoon, Xinhua reported. Bad weather conditions prevented DoC from sending boats to chase the whales into deeper waters.

When the officials returned to the spot Monday, they found the whales beached.

"The whales stranded about 5km from the base of Farewell Spit. They have come very high onto the beach in a big tide," Mason had earlier said in a news release.

Common stranders

Pilot whales and dolphins belong to the same family. Both long-finned whale (Globicephala melaena) and their cousins, short-finned (Globicephala macrorhynchus) live in deeps waters off New Zealand. These two species of whales often get stranded, according to teara.govt.nz.

No one knows why pilot whales strand so often. Popular theories include tricky New Zealand coastline, local oceanic condition, brain-controlling parasitic worms and predators. According to another theory, the entire pod comes to the rescue of a single lost whale, which leads to a mass stranding.

A pod of 51 short-finned pilot whales was found beached on the edge of the Florida Everglades National Park in December.