HOBART, Australia — About 230 whales have been stranded on Tasmania’s west coast, simply days after 14 sperm whales had been discovered beached on an island off the Australian state’s northwestern coast.
The pod stranded on Ocean Beach in Macquarie Harbour seems to be pilot whales and at the least half are presumed to nonetheless be alive, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania stated Wednesday.
A crew from the Marine Conservation Program was assembling whale rescue gear and heading to the realm, the division stated.
The whales beached two years to the day after the most important mass-stranding in Australia’s historical past was found in the identical harbor.
About 470 long-finned pilot whales had been discovered on Sept. 21, 2020, caught on sandbars. After a weeklong effort, 111 of these whales had been rescued however the remainder died.
The entrance to the harbor is a notoriously shallow and harmful channel generally known as Hell’s Gate.
Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist specializing in marine mammals, stated it was too early to clarify why the stranding had occurred.
“The fact that we’ve seen similar species, the same time, in the same location, reoccurring in terms of stranding at that same spot might provide some sort of indication that there might be something environmental here,” Pirotta stated.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”