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Biological Hazard in New Zealand on November 26 2018 07:57 AM (UTC).

More than 100 pilot whales have died after becoming stranded in a remote part of New Zealand. A hiker found the 145 whales in two pods just over a mile apart on Stewart Island, a small island to the south of the country's South Island. They had been half-buried in the sand and around half of them were already dead. The rest were in very bad health and were euthanized, due to the lack of potential rescuers and the difficulty they would have faced in reaching the location.

The whales had been 22 miles from Oban, the main town on Stewart Island, which only has around 400 people. Ren Leppens, Rakiura operations manager at the Department of Conservation, said it had been a "heart-breaking decision to make". He added: "Sadly, the likelihood of being able to successfully re-float the remaining whales was extremely low. "The remote location, lack of nearby personnel and the whales' deteriorating condition meant the most humane thing to do was to euthanize." He thought they had probably been there for a day before being found....

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