Experts try to save beached whales

23 Jan 2009, 7:08 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Wildlife experts will try to save five whales that have survived a mass stranding on Tasmania's north-west tip.

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Wildlife experts will try to save five whales that have survived a mass stranding on Tasmania's north-west tip.

Six Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife staff members spent Friday with the sperm whales after a pod of 50 beached themselves on Perkins Island, near the mouth of the Duck River at Smithton on Thursday night.

Spokeswoman Liz Wren said the island the whales were stranded on was treacherous, with numerous sandbars making it hard for navigation.

Rescuers would attempt to save the remaining whales at high tide on Saturday morning.

Ms Wren said the rescue would be dependent on weather conditions.

"This will be one of the most challenging rescues ever attempted, they are packed pretty tightly together, this will be as difficult as they get," she told AAP.

The staff members rowed a dinghy out to the island on Friday, and spent the day trying to stop the whales overheating and keeping them comfortable.

Some of the surviving whales are up to 18 metres long, and most are mothers and calves.

Dr Nick Gale, a marine mammal expert from the Australian Antarctic Division, said when there were storm force winds that mix up sediments, whales get confused.

Whales used sound in the water column to navigate in shallow waters, Dr Gale said.

"Animals that are bound together very tightly by social bonds like this predominantly female group of sperm whales and their young, tend to move as one organism virtually, and if navigation is confused, on occasion a mistake will be made where they end up on shore," Dr Gale said.

Refloating sperm whales is almost impossible due to their size.

More than 150 whales died in a mass beaching at Sandy Cape, also in the state's remote north-west, in November last year.

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