(04-03) 21:08 PDT WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) –
Rescue workers saved one of two whales stranded on a New Zealand beach but were forced to shoot the other after efforts to guide it back to sea failed, a conservation official said Friday.

Conservation Department staff and residents of Himatangi Beach on North Island’s west coast battled heavy surf for seven hours Thursday to save the two pygmy sperm whales after they became stranded in shallow water, ranger Jim Campbell said.

One of the whales swam back to deep water with guidance from rescuers, but efforts to steer the other failed and the distressed mammal was shot late Thursday to save it from further suffering, he said.

“She’s given up,” Campbell said. “In the natural course of events, she would die.”

The department’s regional biodiversity manager, Vivienne McGlynn, said the whales were roughly the same size and were possibly a mother and calf, “but that’s an assumption.” The bigger of the two whales, about 10 feet long, died on the beach, she said.

New Zealand has several whale beachings around its coastline each summer, some involving as many as 450 whales. Since 1840, more than 5,000 strandings of whales and dolphins have been recorded in New Zealand.

Whale experts have been unable to explain why the mammals apparently swim into dangerously shallow waters.
 

From The San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, April 3, 2008