223 Stranded Whales Rescue Themselves (npr.org)

More than 650 whales beached themselves in New Zealand, and more than 350 of them died. But now an anonymous reader shares NPR's report about a surprising result for the second group of whales. When volunteer rescuers left the beach for the night Saturday, hundreds of survivors from the second stranding remained ashore. Then something curious happened: When the people returned Sunday morning, almost all the surviving whales were gone. All but 17 had left the beach and returned to the waters of Golden Bay overnight.

"We had 240 whales strand yesterday in the afternoon and we were fearful we were going to end up with 240 dead whales this morning," Herb Christophers, a spokesman for New Zealand's Department of Conservation, told Reuters. "But they self-rescued, in other words the tide came in and they were able to float off and swim out to sea."

Comments

Re:They can't be sure..or can they?

[mikaere]

Nah, we've had saturation coverage of this event here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The second pod has been closely monitored and they did actually swim off.

Not disconcerting

[Solandri]

Whatever the reason, it's a natural behavior. Contemporary documentation of strandings dates back to at least the 16th century. Archaeological evidence suggest a stranding about 12,000 years ago. And the earliest evidence is for a possible mass stranding is about 6-9 million years ago.

So these strandings have been happening for a very, very long time. There is no reason to be disconcerted. Interest in the reasons why should be purely academic until prove to be unnatural. While there has been evidence correlating strandings with man-made activities, per scientific standards the burden of proof is upon those advocating such theories to prove a causal relationship.