A couple of whales were found beached and deceased on two Dunedin beaches on Friday.<\/p>\n
Two deceased juvenile Gray\u2019s beaked whales\u00a0were\u00a0found on adjoining Otago beaches, the Department of Conservation (Doc) said in a statement.<\/p>\n
A 3m-long whale was found on Smaills beach, while another slightly smaller whale was located on nearby Tomahawk Beach,\u00a0Doc\u00a0coastal Otago operations manager Gabe Davies said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the condition, it\u2019s possible they stranded sometime overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doc\u00a0staff were on site, and Doc was\u00a0working with mana whenua on next steps, including burial, assisted by the Dunedin City Council and contractor Nash & Ross.<\/p>\n
People were encouraged to keep their distance including keeping dogs under control and well clear.<\/p>\n
Gray\u2019s beaked whales were the most common species of beaked whale found in strandings in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
They are found all around the country\u2019s coast. While beaked whales are mostly deep diving species, they do spend time nearer shore.<\/p>\n
It was sad, but not unusual, for this species to strand on our shores,\u00a0Mr Davies said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A couple of whales were found beached and deceased on two Dunedin beaches on Friday. Two deceased juvenile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-625047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625047","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=625047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}