{"id":226386,"date":"2026-01-10T07:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/226386\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T07:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:31:09","slug":"pod-of-whales-restrands-at-farewell-spit-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/226386\/","title":{"rendered":"Pod of whales restrands at Farewell Spit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSun is a really hard thing for these whales to navigate. They are big black animals, and obviously having the sun beating down on them for a number of hours throughout the morning is going to be uncomfortable, so we\u2019re working hard to get cool water on them, and just try and keep that body temperature down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whales were beached closer to the sea than the previous two strandings<\/a>, which meant they would be surrounded by water for more of the day, and would be easier to refloat, Hawkes said.<\/p>\n

People in wetsuits wanting to help were welcome, but they were limiting the number to avoid further stressing the animals.<\/p>\n

Volunteers would be particularly helpful after midday, as they were planning to refloat the whales this afternoon, she said.<\/p>\n

Last night a Project Jonah spokesperson said 15 of the stranded whales were swimming freely in the bay.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said the remaining whales were still in the tidal zone, but were showing signs of encouraging behaviour.<\/p>\n

The Department of Conservation, which is also assisting at the site of the latest stranding, said Farewell Spit, where whales frequently strand at the top of the South Island, \u201cis a naturally occurring \u2018whale trap\u2019 that occurs along a migratory route for long-finned pilot whales in New Zealand\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSun is a really hard thing for these whales to navigate. They are big black animals, and obviously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1975,2688,111,43,139,69,1118,82886,135196,133673,28975],"class_list":["post-226386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-at","tag-farewell","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-pod","tag-restrands","tag-spit","tag-whales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}