AFTER 48 hours of desperate attempts to save nearly 100 pilot whales stranded at Cheynes Beach, wildlife officials finally made a heartbreaking decision to help the struggling mammals— no other than to euthanize the surviving ones.
It was truly a hard and heartbreaking decision, but it’s something the situation had called for.
Late on Monday, a pod of 97 pilot whales beached massed close to the shore of Cheynes Beach, forming what seemed to be a heart-shaped formation before getting stranded on the shore.
The next day, 52 of them died, urging wildlife officials to make frantic efforts to rescue the surviving ones.
But despite desperate attempts by authorities and volunteers to put them back in the water, the surviving whales have only re-stranded themselves farther down the beach.
This behavior urged officials to euthanize the 45 surviving whales on Wednesday to “avoid prolonging their suffering.”
As experts try to solve the mystery behind this behavior, a research fellow from Griffith University said emotion could have played a huge role in the stranding incident, noting that pilot whales are some of the most emotional animals on the planet and are notorious for their strong social bonds.
Mass stranding of whales is common in some parts of the world and this is not the first time it happened in Australia.
Marine experts hope the latest incident of whale mass stranding could help scientists understand why the animals, and whales in general, beach themselves.