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WELLINGTON:
About 100 pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins have died in a mass stranding on the distant Chatham Islands, about 800 km (497 miles) off New Zealand’s east coast, officers stated on Wednesday.
Most of them have been stranded in the course of the weekend however rescue efforts have been hampered by the distant location of the island.
New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) stated in whole 97 pilot whales and three dolphins died within the stranding, including that they have been notified of the incident on Sunday.
“Only 26 of the whales were still alive at this point, the majority of them appearing very weak, and were euthanised due to the rough sea conditions and almost certainty of there being great white sharks in the water which are brought in by a stranding like this,” stated DOC Biodiversity Ranger Jemma Welch.
Mass strandings are moderately frequent on the Chatham Islands with as much as 1,000 animals dying in a single stranding in 1918.
Mass whale strandings have occurred all through recorded fashionable historical past, and why it occurs is a query that has puzzled marine biologists for years.
In late September, a number of hundred whales died in shallow waters off the Australian coast in one of many world’s greatest mass whale strandings.
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