Adult sperm whale found washed ashore at Rabbit Island

Thursday, 11 August 2022

The body of a large sperm whale has washed up on a Nelson beach.

Department of Conservation Motueka operations manager Chris Golding said the 17-metre long male adult sperm whale found at Rabbit Island was likely to have died of natural causes.

It was reported to DOC on Wednesday morning, and was already dead when it was found. DOC advised the public to keep away from the carcass and not to touch it for health reasons.

DOC iwi manager Barney Thomas said iwi came out on Wednesday and had a karakia to bless the whale and also the area, as that now became tapu as well.

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The tikanga in dealing with deceased sperm whales was the “same as dealing with deceased people”, he said.

“We come out and spend time with the tūpāpaku (body).”

Iwi were extracting the jawbone for future use on Thursday afternoon, work that was being done by both young and old.

Some of whom were on the job were meatworkers. The mahi was “tiring for the old people”, so they rotated in and out, Thomas said.

The jawbone will be taken to the DOC base in Motueka and will be prepared to be placed into the water underneath a wharf at Port Nelson, where it will be swiftly returned to the ocean with the help of sea lice.

“Tangaroa (god of the sea) has given us a gift, and we give it back. One day we will utilise the teeth in the bone for carving, or we might koha to special people, but that comes under the mana of the iwi: they make that decision”.

University of Otago Department of Zoology Professor Liz Slooten said this was the second sperm whale stranding on Rabbit Island in just a few years. It was unusual as sperm whales liked deep water, “about 1000 meters deep or even deeper”.

Slooten said the whale may have died at sea and then stranded or may have got into trouble somehow, and stranded alive and then died.

“They might strand if they’re sick or very old and dying.”

Sperm whales eat “mostly fish and squid”, and can weigh about 40,000 kilograms. In length, Slooten said they would be about two or three buses long, but far heavier.

Slooten spent “years and years off Kaikōura” studying sperm whales, and even swam with a female in Tonga.

Swimming with a humpback whale, she said, “is a bit like swimming with an enormous cow”.

“They have baleen plates, they eat krill, they haven't got teeth so they can't bite you,” she said.

“But sperm whales are literally the biggest predator on Earth, and they do have teeth, and they are not known for being aggressive to humans for sure.

“But it's like swimming with an enormous tiger that's being friendly right now, but you don't want to take any chances.

“They're amazing animals.”

Thomas said iwi were considering the issue of internment.

The enormous whale will leave a lasting legacy: “with each piece of bone that’s utilised, the mauri of the whale will live on,” he said.