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Source: ONE News -
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Twenty one pilot whales which died after a pod stranded on the
Coromandel Peninsula have been buried on sacred Maori land.
Local iwi, residents, and holidaymakers who tried to save the
whales gathered at Colville Bay for a final farewell.
No one knows why the pilot whales came to Colville Bay and there is
a sadness they will never leave.
The 21 whales buried on Monday were guarded overnight against trophy hunters. On Monday morning diggers moved in placing the whales in a grave beneath a sacred headland.
"Our main task at the moment is to bury them with respect and leave them in peace," says Wati Ngamane from Ngati Tamatera.
Iwi member David Hamon says it is a sad day for local Maori.
"It's a sad moment. Maori have a strong, strong connection with whales. We treat them as we would our dead on the marae. You don't leave your dead by themselves."
Hundreds of people fought to save the whales on Sunday when a pod of more than 60 stranded in the shallow tidal bay.
More than 40 were eventually re-floated and the Department of Conservation (DOC) has taken DNA samples from the dead in an attempt to find a reason for the stranding.
DOC spokeswoman for the area, Lyn Williams said none of the whales had returned to the beach overnight.
"Last they were seen they were swimming healthily out to the ocean," she says.
Sadness at the death of so many whales was tempered by the birth of a baby calf on Monday about an hour after the pod was re-floated. Experts monitoring the whales say the baby was swimming well as the pod headed out to sea.
There were tributes for the whales who remain as the local iwi offered blessing and on lookers said their final farewells.
Local iwi say the whales are now at peace buried facing the sun and their spiritual ancestors.
Farewell Spit deaths
Meanwhile, 105 long-finned pilot whales died at Farewell Spit at the top of the South Island on Saturday.
DOC Golden Bay biodiversity programme manager Hans Stoffregen told The Southland Times none of the stranded pod survived.
They were discovered by a tourist plane pilot and reported to Nelson air traffic control, which contacted DOC.
Only 30 were alive when DOC arrived and all of the adults were dead, he said.
"They were in bad shape. By the time we got there two-thirds of them had already died. We had to euthanise the rest."
The whales had been there for a couple of tides and had been out of the water for a long time.
"It has been quite hot and they were very distressed. You could see the pain and suffering in their eyes."
Because the site was in a natural reserve, the whale carcasses were left where they stranded, to decompose, Stoffregen says.
