A representative from the Department of Conservation (DOC) said on Sunday he was cautiously optimistic that a string of whale strandings on New Zealand's shores was over.

"We've pulled our boats out of the water," regional conservation manager Andrew Lamason told news agency AFP.

The crisis started on Friday, when 416 pilot whales were found on Farewell Spit, a 26-kilometer (16 miles) long tongue of land that reaches into the Tasman Sea like a hook.

Volunteers doused the stranded animals with water

"You could hear the sounds of splashing, of blowholes being cleared, of sighing," said Cheree Morrison, who discovered the whales on Friday. "The young ones were the worst. Crying is the only way to describe it."

On Saturday, a group of 240 mammals stranded three kilometers from the Friday beaching, but managed to refloat themselves overnight. In total, more than 650 pilot whales stranded at beaches in the past three days.

Volunteer turnout

Hundreds of volunteers, from farmers to tourists, came to help the stranded ocean mammals. They doused the whales with buckets of water to keep them cool, refloated animals during high tide and formed human chains across the beach to prevent further strandings.

Tourists and locals came out in order to help the stranded mammals on Saturday

"It was an excellent public response," DOC spokesperson Herb Christophers said. "People seem to have an emotional attachment to marine mammals. They've been singing songs to them, giving them specific names, treating them as kindred spirits."

Despite the efforts of the helpers, about 350 whales died. Most of them were among the animals found on Friday and already dead when they were discovered. Twenty animals were euthanized. Pathologists are carrying out necropsies on some of the deceased whales to determine what might have caused the mass stranding. There are different theories as to why whales travel too far inshore, from chasing prey to escaping a predator.

Pilot whales are a common sight off New Zealand

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of whale beachings. Friday night's stranding marked the third-biggest in recorded history. The largest was in 1918, when about 1,000 pilot whales came ashore on the Chatham Islands, situated several hundreds of kilometers east from the two main islands. In 1985, about 450 whales stranded near Auckland in the north of the country.

Fathoming a whale's death Unfortunate news Why did 12 sperm whales end up on German and Dutch beaches last week? What caused them to die? An autopsy of the more than 10-meter-long (33-foot-long) carcasses is supposed to reveal answers.

Fathoming a whale's death Heavy burden For the autopsy, the whales were transported from the beach to mainland Germany. "Difficult and fascinating at the same time," Almut Kottwitz - the deputy environment minister of the German state of Lower Saxony - told DW. A female sperm whale weighs 15 metric tons (16.5 tons), a male up to 60 tonnes. Even though the beached whales were still quite young, they had to be moved with cranes.

Fathoming a whale's death Getting to the skeleton First, the whale's skin is cut into strips and peeled from the body. Preparers removed its muscles and ligaments, and gathered up the innards. "It cut me to the quick to see how these beautiful animals were being skinned and torn apart," an observer of the procedure told DW.

Fathoming a whale's death Museum as final resting place One of the skeletons was brought to Giessen University. Visible here is the whale's jaw - the bones will be treated for display. Another skeleton will be exhibited at a marine museum in Stralsund.

Fathoming a whale's death Lack of food Some of the beached whales seem to have been undernourished, the atopsies found. No wonder: sperm whales feed on giant squids. And these don't live in the North Sea. "Their stomachs and their bowels were entirely empty," Almut Kottwitz told DW, adding that undernourishment seems to be "at least one of the reasons why they died." When whales are hungry and weak, they can get more easily lost.

Fathoming a whale's death Too heavy for land Others among the sperm whales, however, seem to have been well-fed before they ended up on the beach, Ursula Siebert of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover told DW: "They still had undigested beaks of giant squids in their stomachs, and feces in their bowels." Once on the beach, their weight compresses their blood vessels and lungs, causing them to die.

Fathoming a whale's death Champions in deep-sea diving Sperm whales are not made to live in the shallow North Sea. They mostly live thousands of meters under water. In the North Sea, their echolocation doesn't work correctly. "When they arrive at the North Sea, they don't have muchof a chance of finding their way out of it again," vet and zoologist Siebert said. Ultimately, they beach and die.

Fathoming a whale's death Mass beachings A week ago, more than 80 short-finned pilot whales got stranded on the beach of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Conservationists managed to push some animals back into the sea, but most of them died. Fabian Ritter of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation estimates that thousands of whales beach every year.

Fathoming a whale's death You beach, I beach The more socially minded a whale species is, the higher the number of whales that beach from that group. The long-finned pilot whale is one of these species, Fabian Ritter says. These whales have a very strong connection within their family group, or pod. "When the leader is ill or out of sorts, and swims onto the beach, the other group members follow - out of loyalty."

Fathoming a whale's death Too much noise Conservationists warn that underwater noise is dangerous for marine mammals. "Whales have a very sensitive sense of hearing and communicate via sound with each other," Fabian Ritter says. "Loud noise such as from military exercises disorients them." Especially beaked whales are known to beach more often when there is too much noise underwater, Rittter says.

Fathoming a whale's death Is the sun at fault? Solar winds disturb the Earth's magnetic field. Whales might get confused and beach more frequently, researchers found. At the end of December 2015 were three major solar winds, physicist Klaus Vanselow of Kiel University told DW. This might have led the 12 sperm whales to take a wrong turn into the North Sea - and end in death on its beaches. Author: Brigitte Osterath



mb/tj (AFP, AP, dpa)