art photo: Two strandings in a day

via STUFF.CO.NZ

First of all, happy new year to all SeaWayBLOG readers. Unfortunately the first post of 2010 is quite sad: in just one day (December 29th) two different whale mass strandings had occurred in New Zealand causing the death of more than 120 pilot whales. This is just the last event of this kind in a 2009 that from this point of view has been a terrible year (take a look to this summarizing post). Let's hope that 2010 will be better.

The first stranding occured on a remote and exposed Farewell Spit beach, at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The stranded pod was spotted by a tourist plane pilot on Saturday morning when people arrived just 30 of 105 long-finned pilot whales were still alive but their conditions were so bad that they had to be euthanized.
It went better in the other stranding that occurred at Colville Bay, north of Coromandel, in the eastern coast on North Island, New Zealand. There, volunteers managed to save 42 of 63 beached whales as you can see in the pictures. In the tragedy there has also been a little good news: one of the cows gave birth immediately after being rescued under the eyes of the moved volunteers, as you can read in this TIMESONLINE article