{"id":360397,"date":"2026-01-09T06:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T06:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/360397\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T06:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T06:23:07","slug":"new-zealand-six-whales-die-after-mass-stranding-on-remote-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/360397\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand: Six whales die after mass stranding on remote beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pilot whales are highly social animals and have a natural instinct to look out for one another. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Volunteers hope to bring the 15 stranded whales together in a &#8220;nice tight group&#8221; to help them refamiliarise with one another and swim out together, Hawkes said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They will attempt to refloat the whales this afternoon, but time is tight. &#8220;We have to do all of that before the tide turns and drops again,&#8221; Hawkes said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The group is calling for volunteers to help with the refloating.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">New Zealand&#8217;s conservation department has deployed rangers, a boat and a drone to Farewell Spit to monitor any further strandings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mass strandings regularly occur at Farewell Spit, located on the northern-most tip of the South Island. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The conservation department describes it as a &#8220;naturally occurring &#8216;whale trap'&#8221; located along a migratory route for long-finned whales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Whales may be easily deceived and caught out by the gently sloping tidal flats and a rapidly falling tide,&#8221; it said in a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In February 2017, more than 400 long-finned pilot whales washed up there \u2013 the largest stranding in New Zealand for more than 100 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pilot whales are highly social animals and have a natural instinct to look out for one another. Volunteers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-360397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}