KALAPAKI BEACH, Kauai – A mass stranding of pilot whales started at dawn Friday in Kalapaki Bay, fronting the Kauai Marriott Resort.
Several hundred people including wildlife officials, county fire department and law enforcement crews, tourists and residents crowded the beach to watch.
The whales appeared to have arrived in the bay overnight. Surfers said the pod of pilot whales was already in the bay at dawn.
Several of them appeared to swim toward the rock jetty that forms the eastern end of the bay, and then were rolled in the surf against the rocks.
“They were just rolling and pounding. There was a lot of blood,” Lance Matsumoto, a veteran waterman from Lihue, said.
A large pod of pilot whales was in distress off the coast of Kauai Friday morning, with many stranding. These two came ashore at Kalapaki Beach and appeared to be dead. Federal and state wildlife officials were investigating.
Jan TenBruggencate
By 7 a.m., two mid-sized whales had stranded on the sand at the eastern end of the sandy beach fronting Nawiliwili Stream. They appeared to be dead.
The largest member of the pod, identified by marine biologists as a large male, repeatedly approached the shore, but was pushed back to sea by local firefighters, paddlers, surfers and native Hawaiians.
At 9 a.m., the large male was patrolling the shore 10 to 20 yards from the beach.
Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho said that his understanding was that besides the two whales on the beach and the large male, at least two more pilot whales had been attacked by sharks along the jetty and their bodies were no longer on the surface.
Meanwhile, two outrigger canoes, crewed by local paddlers, were attempting to herd several other members of the pod out of Kalapaki Bay. The marine mammals’ prominent fins and spouts of breathing spray could be seen on the bay.
Kauai marine biologist Molly Lutcavage preliminarily identified the whales as short-finned pilot whales, Globicephala macrorhynchus. These marine mammals, which are black in color and can range from six to 18 feet in length, normally stay in deep water, she said.
Mimi Olry, Kaua’i Marine Mammal Response field coordinator, said a NOAA marine mammal team was flying to Kauai Friday morning. She said necropsies are anticipated in hopes of determining the cause of the stranding.
“This is so sad, and so many people are being impacted,” said Carvalho, who walked the beach fronting the stranding site. He said the county would assist NOAA crews in any way possible.
Several hundred people crowded the beach and neighboring jetty. Several people approached the dead stranded whales, alternately stroking and embracing them.
There was no obvious indication of a cause for the stranding. Lutcavage, who has performed numerous necropsies on marine mammals and turtles, said it can be extraordinarily difficult to determine a cause. If there is ear damage or infection, however, that should be readily identifiable, she said.
One beachgoer who helped push one of the stranding whales back into the surf said he detected a bad smell from one of the animals, as if from an infection.
Pilot whale stranding is rare but not unheard of. Several pilot whales standed in Florida in July. Several hundred pilot whales died after two separate strandings in New Zealand in February. Last year there were mass strandings in Java and India.
Strandings occur occasionally in the Hawaiian islands. In 2004, a pod of 150 to 200 melon-headed whales came into Hanalei Bay, and one calf died. In 2008, an orca or killer whale stranded at Brennecke’s Beach in Poipu, and was euthanized.
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