Story: Whales

Stranded humpback

Strandings of whales are relatively common in New Zealand. This humpback was found on Ocean Beach, Dunedin, in 1904.

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Otago Daily Times
Reference: Otago Witness, 25 May 1904

Permission of the Otago Daily Times must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Southern bottlenose skeleton

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Mass stranding

How to cite this page:

Gerard Hutching, 'Whales - Strandings: whales and dolphins', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/7107/stranded-humpback (accessed 19 April 2024)

Story by Gerard Hutching, published 12 Jun 2006

Comments

Stranding are caused by

Bernard (not verified)
31 October 2011

Stranding are caused by many different things. One possible way of preventing them would be to have underwater nets on the common shores where many whales get stranded. Hopefully the net would keep the whales away from shore and when they swim into into it they would turn around. The whales would not get caught in the net and water would still flow as natural as possible. It would be a hard and expensive task to build the net so this idea is not very practical. It is still a possibility though and would help the stranding.

I think that we could put a

Kahutia Te Rangi (not verified)
28 October 2011

I think that we could put a big net that is under the water so the whales can not get too close to shore, but the holes in the net won't restrict the flow of water, and the net would be far enough down so boats could pass over it, but high enough so the whales can't pass it.

We think that we should put

Rehua (not verified)
27 October 2011

We think that we should put a wall thats about 10-12 feet high so that the whales can't get onto the bay and beach themselves, but the wall would have some holes to let fresh water in from the ocean so the water won't be the same. Almost like a filter.

I think that to stop the

Rawiri (not verified)
27 October 2011

I think that to stop the stranding of the whales, we should make a machine like a shark repeller that could stop the whales from getting to the coast. It could use electricity to hurt the whales, but not kill them. It would shock them and make them swim away. We could place these machines near the coasts of common whale stranding areas. This would be how we would deal with the many whale strandings.

On the beaches that are

Koro Apirana (not verified)
27 October 2011

On the beaches that are known as "whale traps" we should try to block off the shallow part of the beach so that when whales using echolocation echolocate the sounds waves bounce off the man-made wall telling the whales to turn back preventing stranding. Of course the walls will be put out deep enough so that people can still swim.

Jessie Ho (not verified)
27 October 2011

One of the main reasons that

Bull Whale (not verified)
27 October 2011

One of the main reasons that whales strand themselves is the parasites that are from the pollution we create. They infect the brains of the whales and it makes their brains function incorrectly. We can prevent this if we pollute less in the water because there might be parasites that lives in the trash that's in the ocean and they travel and go into whale brains.

Stranding is when whales get

Kahu (not verified)
27 October 2011

Stranding is when whales get pushed up to the shore by natural resources.The most common place where Stranding occurs is in New Zealand.Stranding occurs when some worms in the brain affecting co-ordination and balance. Sometimes it has to do with biological reasons.

Some ways to prevent

Some ways to prevent standings, is to stop throwing trash into the water. By throwing trash and chemicals, that could cause the worms in most whales brain to make them want to come to shore. Where the whales has been proved to like beaching themselves, there should be people who volunteer regularly to check if whales have beached themselves and push them back in the water. They could also put little devices that could bounce back or reflect the eco location that whales make, so that they know theres a shore there so they wont't beach themselves.

It's Bad

Koro Rawiri (not verified)
27 October 2011

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Stranded humpback

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Stranded humpback

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