ABOVE: Rescuers work to keep a stranded pilot whale alive. TASMANIA POLICE
Hundreds of pilot whales have become beached in the shallow waters of Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast of Tasmania. Many of the whales are dead, the BBC reports.
The stranding event is the largest ever recorded in Tasmania, Kris Carlyon, a wildlife biologist with the Australian state’s Marine and Conservation Program, said in a Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment statement today (September 23). Carlyon is part of the effort to rescue the living whales from the sand bars of the harbor and return them to deeper waters.
“Pilot whales are deep-water species that are not accustomed to shallow waters or tides and may not be able to navigate well using their biosonar in shallow and sandy environments,” Fleur Visser, the scientific director of Kelp Marine Research, writes in an email to The Scientist.
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