A rare deep-water whale species was found dead on the shoreline near Kaka Point this week.<\/p>\n
Department of Conservation operations manager Murihiku John McCarroll said the animal was identified as a Gray\u2019s beaked whale, or hakur\u0101, a species seldom seen due to its preference for deep ocean waters.<\/p>\n
It was discovered early Tuesday morning by a member of the public out walking their dog.<\/p>\n
Doc were notified and staff arrived on site about an hour later.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The animal was a mature male, 4.6m long and had washed up dead,\u2019\u2019 Mr McCarroll said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The overall size combined with extensive scarring on the skin suggest it was an old individual; the absence of evidence to the contrary would support a conclusion of death by natural causes.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Gray\u2019s beaked whales are rarely observed alive, and much of what is known about them comes from stranded specimens.<\/p>\n
The body was promptly removed from the Willsher Bay, Karoro Creek area following standard procedure, with Doc staff taking measurements and photographs before collecting biological samples to support ongoing research.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Local mana whenua have been consulted and expressed a preference that, once scientific samples are taken to support ongoing knowledge building and conservation, this taonga be buried as close as practicable to where originally found,\u2019\u2019 Mr McCarroll said.<\/p>\n
Samples including skin and blubber will be sent to research programmes at universities in Auckland and Palmerston North. \u2014 Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rare deep-water whale species was found dead on the shoreline near Kaka Point this week. Department of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-417311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417311","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=417311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}