Volunteers save around 100 of 400 beached whales in New Zealand

Earlier, volunteers had tried to keep the surviving whales damp and cool by placing blankets over them, as well as throwing buckets of water on them while waiting for high tide to come.

The photos below show volunteers rapidly working to save the surviving whales at Farewell Spit.

Mr Grover said rescuers were relying on high tide to help refloat the mammals.

At Farewell Spit, where 200 whales beached in 2015, the tide can come in for 5 kilometres, creating a vast stretch of water no more than 3 metres deep at any point, a perilous situation for whales used to deep water.

Takaka Operations Manager Andrew Lamason acknowledged the great work done by whale rescue group Project Jonah.

“Normally (they) are between November and March and it’s not many years we don’t have one”.

Volunteers who first reached the beach on Friday morning described the distressing sight of whale corpses scattered on the beach and floating in the shallows.

He explained that all the surviving whales had been refloated and, and that about 100 volunteers had formed a human chain in the sea to prevent them from beaching again, standing neck-deep in wet suits to courageous the cold waters.

With pilot whales, which travel in large groups, such events can involve hundreds.

Project Jonah reports New Zealand has one of the highest whale stranding rates in the world. Partly because there’s so many strandings here. A receding tide can easily strand the entire pod, resulting in mass strandings. “But hey, if we can get some of them out, that’s got to be a good thing”. According to the department, mass strandings still aren’t fully understood; a disoriented leader, navigational error, or rescue effort to retrieve a stranded young whale are among the possible causes.

Whales can also become stranded after being hit by ships or tangled in fishing nets.

And Farewell Spit is located on the north end of Golden Bay, a known hotspot for pilot whale strandings. The second largest occurred in Auckland in 1985, when some 450 whales ran ashore.

Hundreds of the whales were unable to be saved.

As of Friday afternoon (local time), the whales have been spotted returning back to the beach, with some of them getting caught in the sands again.

Around 120 were put back out to sea, after one of the country’s largest recorded mass strandings.