Dozens of whales have died after 160 became beached during a mass stranding event in WA's south-west. Community members turned out this morning to the mouth of Toby Inlet at Geographe Bay near Dunsborough, where dozens of pilot whales were stuck in shallow water.

Geographe

In a tragic event at Geographe Bay near Dunsborough, southwest of Western Australia (WA), 160 pilot whales became stranded at the mouth of Toby Inlet. Despite the efforts of the community and scores of volunteers, around 30 whales perished in the mass stranding incident. The remaining whales, numbering approximately 130, were successfully guided back to sea and are currently under observation.

The stranding attracted a large number of volunteers and spectators to the beach, who assisted in the rescue efforts. The local community, familiar with such incidents due to previous strandings in southern WA, rallied to keep the whales wet and aid their return to the ocean. The experience and knowledge gained from past events played a crucial role in the successful rescue of many of the whales.

This incident adds to the history of whale strandings in the region, with similar events recorded in nearby locations such as Albany and Hamlin Bay in Augusta. It provides researchers with a valuable opportunity to learn more about pilot whales and the causes of such strandings. The survival of a significant number of whales in this stranding is seen as an extraordinary outcome, offering hope for future rescue operations and greater understanding of marine mammals.



Mass whale stranding in southwest WA

So we are down here on a beach in Dunsborough which is south of Perth and this morning if you'd been here a few hours ago there was about 160 whales all stranded on this beach so it was pretty distressing, pretty sad for the locals to see but a bunch of volunteers came along and helped and helped the whales keep wet while they were slowly heralded back to sea and in really good news about 130 of the whales have made it back out to sea so they are being closely monitored at the moment out there. Sadly there was about 30 whales that have died and you can see behind me that volunteers are tagging those whales and they're going to be removed from the beach at some point hopefully today. It's definitely not uncommon to see whales like this, they're pilot whales stranded on beaches in southern WA. There was one that happened just last year in Albany which is further south and one that happened in Hamlin Bay in Augusta which is just down the road as well so it is certainly something that some locals are familiar, some experts are familiar with and they definitely knew what to do when they were called on Anzac Day to spring into action this morning and perhaps that local knowledge is a bit of the reason we've had so many survivals here today. All sorts of people down here today, if you had been here a few hours ago you would have seen the initial crew of volunteers who stepped up, the locals to come in and help and they were successful in helping to shepherd these whales off the beach and out to the shore and the volunteers just kept flooding in, flooding in. There was quite a lot of people here at some stage, hundreds of people down here. There was also families, people wanting to learn a bit more about the whales. I spoke to one family who told me it was pretty surreal to see these whales up close. The kids wanted to, the first reaction I could see was to get close and to touch them. You can see there's a lot of emotion, there's lots of people who are quite teary. I think we all love marine mammals, they have a special effect on us. It's very sad, especially when you see the little ones as well. There's a baby over here on the beach. But hopefully for my daughter, you know, can she as she grows up maybe find a solution, find out why this happened. Every time these whales strand up, authorities are learning more and more about the species. This is particularly exciting in the fact that we've had so many whales that have survived. We've had 130 whales that are offshore right now. That is miraculous and not something we see every day. One of the last whale strandings we had, there were about 150 whales that died. Just the fact that so many have survived, it gives researchers a chance to learn something new and to maybe do things better for next time. So we see more and more of these cases where the whales actually do survive.

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