OAN Staff Abril Elfi
5:40 PM – Wednesday, February 18, 2025
Over 150 False Killer Whales have been found stranded on a remote beach in Tasmania, an island state of Australia.
On Tuesday, Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources announced that 157 whales were found stranded near the Arthur River.
They continued, explaining that by Wednesday morning, only 90 of them were still alive. Even though a number of rescuers attempted to send two back out to sea, strong winds and rough waves sadly resulted in the whales being pushed back to shore.
“It’s quite rough, and the animals just can’t get past the break to get out. They just keep turning around and coming back towards the beach,” said Shelley Graham, incident controller with Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service.
Department liaison officer Brendon Clark noted that inaccessibility of the beach, ocean conditions, and challenges related to getting equipment to the remote area were complicating the response efforts.
“To try to refloat the animals directly back into that surf would be challenging and then of course that would also present some enormous safety risks for our staff and personnel,” Clark told reporters.
“We’ve got our experts on site now that are doing all that they can to determine what methodology will be implemented to try and find a suitable and a humane response to this particular very challenging incident,” Clark added.
The last time this many fake killer whales were stranded in Tasmania was back in June 1974, when a pod of 160 to 170 were discovered at Black River beach on the island’s northern shore. However, it’s unclear how many survived.
Authorities later reported that they have decided to euthanize the 90 whales still alive in order to alleviate their suffering. After many hours on the beach, they were “disoriented and distressed.”
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