According to Conservation Officer Dave Lundquist, a technical team visited the site on Monday to assess the situation. In view of the condition of the animals, the experts decided to end the suffering of the individuals who are still alive, MTI reports.
Pitt Island is an area cut off from the outside world, in which few people live. Lundquist noted that great white sharks, which are dangerous to both humans and animals, breed in nearby waters, so there is no way to rescue the stranded cetaceans.
Darren Grover, an employee of an organization called Project Jonah, noted that there weren’t enough people to direct bottlenose dolphins into the water. He said: The area’s rich marine life is attractive to cetaceans. The Chatham Islands consist of the Pitt and Chatham Islands and are located 840 kilometers east of the South Island of New Zealand. Eight hundred people live on the larger Chatham Island, and only forty of them live on Pitt Island.
On Saturday, 215 bottlenose dolphins died on Chatham Island, which is located just forty kilometers to the north. Animals found alive were shot by rangers to save them from further suffering. Similar cases are not uncommon on the Chatham Islands. In 1918, more than a thousand animals stranded on these shores died.
Dolphins are very social creatures. In mass strandings, it often happens that the survivors swim back to find their mates. This behavior makes a successful rescue more difficult.
