Beachgoers have been dismayed by a dead whale washing up at a popular surfing spot, before an early morning removal.<\/p>\n
About 70 people gathered as the juvenile female measuring almost seven metres floated between Sunshine Coast’s Point Cartwright and Mudjimba late on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The humpback whale washed ashore between Alexandra Headland and Maroochydore, remaining there overnight in an exclusion zone as authorities waited for high tide to remove it.<\/p>\n
“When it came ashore it was already dead so it was not in distress,” Sunshine Coast Mayor Rosanna Natoli told AAP.<\/p>\n
It was towed out about 20 nautical miles from shore about 5.30am (7.30am NZT) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“It is extremely sad when you see a majestic animal like this washed up ashore,” Natoli said.<\/p>\n
“It’s school holidays now and this is a popular stretch of beach.<\/p>\n
“So it was really important that we were able to carefully and respectfully remove the whale out to sea before first light when the high tide came up.”<\/p>\n
Samples were taken from the whale in a bid to determine its cause of death and it was tested for bird flu.<\/p>\n
The whale was also fitted with a GPS tracker to monitor its movements in case authorities had to intervene if it drifted back to the coast.<\/p>\n
Data collected would help the future management of carcasses, Natoli said.<\/p>\n
“I would like to thank the community for being respectful,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We managed the situation carefully and people helped us by staying a safe distance away \u2013 it helped make it a smooth operation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beachgoers have been dismayed by a dead whale washing up at a popular surfing spot, before an early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[50,85,111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-609035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-australia","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609035","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=609035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}