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Beached whales on the Chatham Islands
Photo: Tamzin Henderson/AP
Almost 240 pilot whales have died after being stranded on a remote New Zealand island.
The marine mammals got lost on Pitt Island in the South Pacific on Monday, the country's conservation agency said on Wednesday.
Pitt Island is more than 800 kilometers off the east coast of New Zealand.
According to the information, around 240 pilot whales died on neighboring Chatham Island on Saturday.
Pilot whales can grow up to six meters long.
They are known to be very sociable and may therefore follow fellow animals who are in danger.
risk of shark attacks
Some of the whales were dead when they arrived, but the rest needed to be euthanized to minimize suffering, said Dave Lundquist, an adviser to the agency.
In the region, rescuers would not actively return the marine mammals "because of the risk of shark attacks on humans and the whales themselves, so euthanasia was the most humane solution."
Pitt Island is New Zealand's most remote inhabited island, with limited communications and difficult logistics, according to the agency.
According to the whale protection organization Project Jonah, with a total of almost 480 dead whales within a few days, it was one of the larger mass strandings in the Pacific state.
"At Farewell Spit (on the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island) there are large mass strandings, but on average there are 70 to 80 whales." The rescuers would try to save animals if this was possible.
In New Zealand it happens again and again that whales get lost on beaches.
Such events are also not uncommon on the Chatham Islands, which includes Pitt Island.
In 1918 more than a thousand animals are said to have died in a single stranding.
In Australia, almost 200 whales perished a few weeks ago on a remote beach in the state of Tasmania.
The authorities there managed to guide 44 of the marine mammals back into the water.
wit/dpa