Around 140 pilot whales have died after beaching themselves on an island off Tasmania despite frantic efforts to save them.

The dead whales were among 192 stranded on Naracoopa Beach on King Island on Sunday night. Most had died by the time they were discovered.

But 54 whales and five dolphins were successfully refloated after volunteers worked through the day to keep them hydrated until they could be coaxed back into deep water at high tide.

Chris Arthur of the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service said the refloated whales had rejoined a larger pod.

“This afternoon with the high tide we were able to get those 54 animals plus the dolphins back into open water and we’ve given them the best chance we can,” he said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Wildlife officials will monitor the pod to make sure they don’t strand themselves again. Footage of the rescue efforts on CNN.com showed dozens of islanders at work on the beach trying to keep the surviving whales alive and using boats and jet skis to tug them out to sea.

King Island Council General Manager Andrew Wardlaw said locals had done a great job keeping the surviving whales alive but described the scene on the beach as a “mess of bodies”.

Tasmania is a black spot for whale strandings, accounting for around 80 percent of those reported in Australia. More than 400 whales have died around the island’s coastline in the past three months, including 48 sperm whales.

There are many reasons for whale and dolphin strandings, including man-made noise and disturbance. Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said a thorough investigation into the causes of the stranding was required.

“Whales and dolphins strand for many reasons both natural and unnatural. Sometimes a group of animals will make a navigational error and the strong social bonding that exists in some species can mean that many strand together,” he said. “It is also true that some shores, because of their depth, shapes and bottom substrate, are especially prone to mass strandings.

“However, in this day and age when we are introducing so much noise and disturbance into the seas, we need to make sure that we are not causing strandings.”

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Cetaceans, Mammals, Ocean, Whales, Wild. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.