People took to Facebook to remark on Lee\u2019s valiant actions. <\/p>\n
\u201cWow, Shaun, great commitment…great job.. thank you\u2019 while another posted, \u2018You are astounding Shaun\u2019 and \u2018great work Shaun. You are an inspiration\u2019.<\/p>\n
Lee told the Herald a member of the publicwas in the water trying to help the whale which had beached up against rocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stood on a sandy bank area near the rocks and managed to briefly float the whale, but it came back in again.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the man had to leave, Lee was left to fend for himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in the water trying to help by myself for maybe 30 minutes to an hour… it was pretty stressful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, members of the public back on land called Project Jonah, a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping marine mammals, who arrived just under an hour later.<\/p>\n
Project Jonah marine mammal medics and Department of Conservation staff responded to calls for help. Photo \/ Supplied <\/p>\n
Project Jonah-trained marine medic Richard Harri had just got home from work after feeling unwell, when he got a text just after 11am that asked if he could help out with the stricken mammal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018Ok, yeah, I can go see\u2019 and went to Achilles Pt, but there was already a volunteer down in the water with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could see the whale clear as day from up top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee later posted to social media about the encounter saying \u201cyesterday was incredibly stressful, trying to keep this three-tonne Shepherd\u2019s Beaked Whale off the beach by myself while the tide was going out\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cBetween dodging its powerful tail and big teeth, worrying about the whale, and communicating with experts, it was a short but serious physical and emotional challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whale was freed around 6.30pm after several attempts by volunteers to get it into into deeper waters.<\/p>\n
Project Jonah spokeswoman Louisa Hawkes told RNZ Shepherd\u2019s beaked whales lived in the deep sea and would only come up to shore if something was wrong.<\/p>\n
Health checks by vets from the Cetacean Ecology Research Group Health revealed a high breathing rate and surface-level bleeding from the tail.<\/p>\n
According to Project Jonah, Shepherd\u2019s beaked whales have only been spotted out at sea four times, with fewer than 50 strandings recorded globally. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People took to Facebook to remark on Lee\u2019s valiant actions. \u201cWow, Shaun, great commitment…great job.. thank you\u2019 while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[4826,9490,10960,64,46190,63,17713,22806,105298,17846,258604,154448,91384,258605,4717,17165,124700,99956,128,230397,241636,52741,55824,18570,258603,11814,38810,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-517767","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-actions","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-as","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-aucklands","13":"tag-australia","14":"tag-beach","15":"tag-been","16":"tag-efforts","17":"tag-free","18":"tag-gruelling","19":"tag-harbour","20":"tag-heroic","21":"tag-hourslong","22":"tag-in","23":"tag-popular","24":"tag-rare","25":"tag-saved","26":"tag-science","27":"tag-seen","28":"tag-shallow","29":"tag-solo","30":"tag-stranded","31":"tag-volunteers","32":"tag-waitemat","33":"tag-water","34":"tag-whale","35":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}