HOBART, Australia – Rescuers returned 11 pilot whales to sea Sunday, a day after a pod of 64 mothers and calves were found stranded on a beach in southeastern Australia, wildlife officials said.
A team of 15 government officers and 60 volunteers worked to transport the whales from Anthony's Beach, where they were found Saturday, to a beach with deeper waters 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) away on the island state of Tasmania.
Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Services manager Chris Arthur said the whales, which measured up to 9.8 feet (three meters) long, were successfully returned to sea at high tide Sunday afternoon.
Rescuers said they hope the whales will rejoin another migratory pod once they swim back into the Bass Strait, which separates the island of Tasmania from southern Australia.
Satellite tracking devices were placed on some of the whales and a reconnaissance plane would check their progress on Monday, Arthur said.
When the stranded whales were found, 52 had already died and one died overnight Saturday despite volunteers spending the night pouring water over the animal to keep it from overheating.
On Sunday morning, the surviving whales were hoisted in large slings into specially equipped trucks to be driven to Godfrey's Beach. Volunteers dragged the slings into the water and waited with the whales for high tide to help them out to sea.
Arthur said samples for scientific research had been taken from the dead mammals and a mass burial would be arranged.
Strandings are not uncommon in Tasmania, where the whales pass by on their migration to and from Antarctic waters. It is not known why whales get stranded.
Pilot whales are members of the dolphin family but are considered to behave more like whales. Because of their social nature and the fact they travel together in large groups, mass strandings can occur.
Australian rescuers free 11 whales after mass stranding
Yahoo News 23 Nov 08;
SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian rescuers Sunday saved 11 stranded whales by moving them by road to another beach and dragging them out to sea, an official said.
A pod of 64 pilot whales, most of them females and calves, beached on Anthony's Beach on the southern island of Tasmania on Saturday.
Fifty-two of the giant animals died after the stranding but 12 surviving whales were looked after overnight by rescuers, Chris Arthur of Tasmania's Parks and Wildlife Service told AFP.
Rescuers placed nets around the animals, which measured between 3-5 metres (yards) and weighed up to 1.5 tonnes, on Sunday morning and manually hauled them onto car trailers to take them to another beach.
"We used specially built car trailers, which we were able to put up to two whales in each. And we transported those animals 17 kilometres (11 miles) to Godfrey's Beach," Arthur said.
The animals were then carefully dragged back into the water by about 70 rescuers. Arthur said the release went well and satellite trackers were placed on some of the whales to keep track of their progress.
But Arthur said one animal died as the rescue team was attempting to put it back into the water.
"We kept 12 of them alive, kept them going, and then we only lost one transporting them and getting them into the waters."
Samples will be taken from the deceased whales for scientific purposes and authorities were in the process of negotiating what to do with the bodies, Arthur said.
Whale strandings are not uncommon in Tasmania, and there are a number of such occurrences each year, Arthur said.
A number of theories have been put forward as to why whales strand themselves, but the phenomenon remains a subject of scientific debate.
Australian rescuers save 11 whales after mass stranding
Reuters 23 Nov 08;
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian wildlife rescuers on Sunday said they successfully returned a small number of pilot whales to the ocean after a mass stranding in Tasmania.
Chris Arthur, who coordinated the rescue effort, said 11 of the 64 animals found stranded on the island's north coast on Saturday were released after a day-long effort which involved relocating them by road to another beach.
Environmentalists said it was unusual to save any whales after such a mass stranding
"We have successfully released 11 animals out to sea," Arthur told Reuters by telephone. "The last one went out less than 20 minutes ago."
While the possibility that the animals would strand themselves again could not be ruled out, he said, the hope was that they would instead join up with other pilot whales in the ocean. Some the whales have been tagged and aerial reconnaissance is planned to check on their progress.
"We have had a reasonable outcome. They will form a small pod. We have given them the best chance they have got," said Arthur, a regional officer with the Tasmanian state parks and wildlife service.
This maternal pod of 64 long-finned pilot whales, around one-third of them juveniles, were found stranded on Saturday along a stretch of Anthony's Beach at Stanley on the island's northwest coast, a site where repeated strandings have occurred in the past.
Pilot whales are among the smaller whales, typically up to about five meters in length and dark with a grey underbelly. Their relatively small size may have helped rescuers save them, environmentalists said.
Although most of the pod could not be saved, a team of around 65 people battled throughout much of Sunday to move 12 survivors, including both adults and juveniles, 17 kilometers by road in trailers to nearby Godfrey's Beach to try to return them to the sea. One whale died during the operation.
Mass strandings of whales occur periodically in Australia and New Zealand for reasons that are not entirely understood. Theories include disturbance of echo-location, possibly by interference from sound produced by human activities at sea, a spokeswoman for the environmental group Greenpeace told Reuters.
In a statement, the state government said satellite trackers had been placed on some of the released whales and a reconnaissance plane would fly over the area on Monday to check on the whales' progress. Samples are to be taken from the dead whales and a mass burial organized.
Although wildlife officials and volunteers have often tried to save stranded whales, relatively few attempts have been successful.
(Editing by David Fox)