Australia's environmental authorities had to make the tragic decision to euthanize the 46 pilot whales stranded on Cheynes Beach, after a group of volunteers worked around the clock to try to save them. But in a new attempt, the cetaceans ran aground again. Already 51 animals had died on the coast, about 400 km southwest of Perth.
Veterinarians applied the euthanasia measure on Wednesday afternoon, after volunteers were ordered to vacate the beach where they were working to keep the surviving whales of a massive stranding in which 51 specimens had already died moist and cool.
The slaughter of the whales had been preceded by unsuccessful attempts to return them to the Pacific Ocean. The authorities of the state of Western Australia tried to set up an escape route with rubber boats. Despite having been taken to the sea, the cetaceans returned in groups to the coast.
"It's a terrible thing, but it's very moving to see that sense of humanity with the people who keep these whales afloat," said Reece Whitby, Western Australia's environment minister.
The appearance of almost a hundred pilot whales, also called pilot whales, had surprised about 400 km southeast of the city of Perth, reported the AFP agency.
"Unfortunately, some 51 whales died," the parks and wildlife service of the Western Australia region said early in the morning, through social networks.
51 pilot whales have died on a beach in Australia: volunteers try to save another 46 that are stranded. Photo AFP.
The rescue attempts involved veterinarians, marine wildlife experts and volunteers who moved by land and sea. They tried to take the 46 survivors to deep waters, with the intention of reintegrating them into their habitat.
The pilot whales are a genus of cetaceans, of the family of "oceanic dolphins", composed of two species, the pilot whale and the pilot whale.
Those two species are difficult to distinguish at first glance, only by being sighted in the ocean. Comparing their skulls is the only way to differentiate them with certainty for scientists.
An unsuccessful attempt to return the surviving whales to the sea, in Australia. In the end, they were sacrificed. Photo EFE
A similar event occurred in September 2022, when most of the 230 pilot whales that were stranded on an island in the Australian region of Tasmania, which, like Cheynes Beach, is on the migratory routes of various species of cetaceans, died.
That stranding in Tasmania came two years after some 470 pilot whales were stranded in that same place, of which only a hundred could be rescued and taken to the high seas.
Like its neighboring country New Zealand, Australia is the natural scene of frequent strandings of whales and marine mammals, without experts having managed to clarify precisely the reasons.
Volunteers try to save another 46 pilot whales stranded on a beach in Australia.
In 1918 the largest event of its kind was recorded with about 1,000 pilot whales killed, while a century later, in 2018, 51 pilot whales died after running aground in Hanson Bay.
With information from Télam.
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