Why is saving the whales so important to New Zealanders?

Friday, 10 February 2017

The crowd cheered as the whale tentatively made its way back out to sea.

It was June last year it was reported 'thousands of locals' helping Project Jonah volunteers and Department of Conservation workers refloat a single false killer whale stranded on Christchurch's Waimairi Beach. They dug holes around it to prevent sand compressing its organs and carried buckets of water in a human chain to pour over it, before lifting it off the beach with a pontoon. It was a joyous scene.

Their dedication was not a one-off. When whales are in need, Kiwis respond.

Our sense of compassion is partly cultural, partly circumstantial. About half of all the marine mammal species in the world can be found in New Zealand waters, most of them in good numbers, which makes our coastline a frequent land trap. Particularly for whales and dolphins.

**READ MORE:

* Live: Hundreds of whales dead

* Video: Devastating vision from Farewell Spit 

* Photos: Whales as far as the eye can see

* Mass whale stranding at Farewell Spit**

Data held by the Department of Conservation (DOC) shows that there have been more than 1700 recorded strandings of whales and dolphins on New Zealand shores since 1840, involving nearly 18,000 animals. Records are sporadic up until the 1970s, when environmentalism caught on, so the true numbers will be far higher, but whatever it is the country ranks high on whale awareness and conservation.

Project Jonah was formed here in 1974 for the protection of whales, dolphins and seals and the government passed the Marine Mammals Protection Act in 1978. About two thirds of all recorded strandings have occurred since then, and all of the recorded refloat attempts.

On one hand, this is easy to explain: everybody loves whales. Their propensity to strand on our beaches only enhances this bond, real or perceived. Also, whales are mammals, and humans can relate to other mammals.

'Although the animal is shaped like a fish, it's clear it is not a fish,' Dr Liz Slooten​ of the New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust says.

'The behaviour, that they are so social, the fact that they spend a long time looking after their calves. People have a strong affinity for them.'

This is true the world over, though. Save the Whales is not a New Zealand-only phenomenon. What sets us apart, Slooten says, is our connection to the ocean. For the size of our country, we have a lot of coastline.

'I think the beach culture makes people more keen than they might be in other parts of the world to save them.

'When you see a whale on the beach, you call DOC and help out. It's become part of our culture. Partly because there's so many strandings here. Somewhere like France, the USA, there are good stranding networks, similar to Project Jonah. But somehow there's a much stronger culture of that here.'

The largest recorded whale stranding in New Zealand was on the Chatham Islands in 1918, when 1000 long-finned pilot whales were marooned at Long Beach, on the main island. Second to that was 450 long-finned pilot whales on Great Barrier Island in 1985 (324 were refloated). Most strandings are of a single animal, at most a small group. Almost all large-scale beachings involve pilot whales – a breed named out of a misconception their pods were 'piloted' by a leader.

'Their social bonds are incredibly strong,' Slooten, a professor of zoology at the University of Otago, says.

'Even if there's only one individual in that group in trouble or ill or giving birth, or any reason that one individual is going to strand, then what tends to happen is the entire group strands.'

The reasons why whales strand are numerous and imprecise, but Slooten suspects this is behind the beaching at Farewell Spit – a large pod nursing one stricken member. Pilot whales prefer deep water. The shallow, sandy bays of the northwest South Island, where their echolocation sensor goes awry, are a notorious graveyard.

'If there's a shallow beach the sound can actually bounce on and further away from the whale rather than back towards it,' Slooten says.

'It's very confusing for pilot whales already to be in shallow water, then to have this long stretch of shallow water with no clear way out. If they were off the coast of Kaikoura they'd only have to swim ten or 20 metres and they'd know which direction was deeper water. In Farewell Spit they're literally stuck in there and can't find their way back out. It's partly the geography of the area, partly several aspects of the biology and behaviour of pilot whales that means this just keeps happening [there].'

RECORDED WHALE/DOLPHIN STRANDINGS BY REGION 1840-2015:

Hawke's Bay         300

Northland              210

Wellington             171

Auckland               136

Canterbury            122

Chatham Islands  109

Tasman                  101

Bay of Plenty          99

Waikato                  94

Taranaki                  82

Otago                      66

Southland               56

West Coast             54

Manawatu               42

Gisborne                 37

Nelson                    33

Marlborough           31

Source: Department of Conservation