Pages

Wednesday 19 July 2017

Farewell Spit

A week ago, Farewell Spit was left a graveyard of more than 300 dead whales, after one of the biggest strandings in New Zealand history. Reporter Michael Cropp went there and found eight more stranded on the beach.
Ten minutes into walking down the beach and I begin to understand why the locals nod about the name Farewell Spit.The bones of birds and fish give it away. It is here that 300 pilot whales have died in strandings since 10 February. Farewell Spit is now a graveyard.  When I arrive, the beach is covered in whales' blood and scrape marks left by the diggers that moved them.  Pilot whales are social creatures. They probably followed each other onto the spit's tidal flats. They remind me of big, wet, blubbery lemmings, beaching en masse because their leader did.

1 comment:

  1. Kia ora Evangeline,

    It was really sad to read about what happened in Farewell Spit, wasn't it? I felt terrible for the whales and for the locals who did what they could to save them. I really hope that the pilot whales don't make the same mistake next time and follow each other onto the spit.

    Thanks for posting the article from Michael Cropp. Can you please add the link to the website where you found this article? It is really important that we remember to give credit to the original authors of any of the work that we copy and paste on our blogs. Otherwise, people might think that we wrote it and it would be misleading.

    Thanks, Evangeline!

    Cheers,
    Rachel

    ReplyDelete