One of the dead Sei whale lies in Caleta Buena, in the southern Aysen region of Chile (Picture: AP)

The corpses of 337 whales have washed up on the coast of southern Chile – the largest die-off on record.

Researchers were horrified to find 305 bodies and 32 skeletons of dead sei whales in an extremely remote inlet in Patagonia.

‘It was an apocalyptic sight,’ biologist Vreni Haussermann, from the Huinay Scientific Center, said. ‘I’d never seen anything like it.’

Scientists initially launched the expedition after reports in April that 20 whales had died, although they have only just publicly revealed the discovery.


But when they flew over the region in June, they discovered that the scale of the stranding was much larger.

Researchers found 337 dead sei whales (Picture: AP)

And it could be even worse.



‘There are still a lot of areas we haven’t managed to reach, so it’s likely there are more dead whales,’ Haussermann added.

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Researchers initially said the whales had no wounds, and suggested they could have died of a virus or a harmful algal bloom known as ‘red tide’.

They have since been collecting samples from the various whale corpses, and have declined to disclose the conclusions. They will be published later this year.

Scientists have not revealed the cause of death (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)

Seis are the third largest known whales in existence, growing up to 60 feet, and are also one of the fastest.

This is the biggest single die-off of its kind known to science, and will be investigated in a future issue of National Geographic magazine.

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The disturbing find comes as 195 nations meet in Paris for the COP21 conference, to work on a pact to tackle climate change.

Marine biologists warn that the warming of the world’s oceans is killing off whales’ food supplies and changing their migratory routes.