It wasn’t easy for the two officers grasping pink ribbons to wade between the 1,000kg pilot whales and the dozens of volunteers.
Their job was to identify the distressed animals in the pod, those who rolled rather than bobbed in the water ready to swim. The ribbons were not signs of life but markers of impending death.
The previous day, almost 100 long-finned pilot whales had stranded at Cheynes beach on Western Australia’s southern coast. Now, on Wednesday, the race was on to save 47 animals that had survived the night.
Among the survivors were calves that cried out in whistles, as well as adults, some up to 4 metres long, that struggled to stay afloat.
Albany local Colleen Smetham was one of the hundreds of volunteers who turned up to the beach desperately trying to herd the pod back out to sea.
She spent hours steadying a large pilot whale but, by late afternoon, her animal was one of many that had attracted a pink ribbon.
“We were supporting them to stay upright,” she said. “We had to support the side pectoral fins to keep its belly facing the sand and the blowhole facing the sky.”
Cheynes beach is Noongar country, 60km east of Albany and about six hours’ drive south of Perth.
Its picturesque white sands lure families, fishers and whale watchers, with humpbacks and southern rights using the bay for calving from May until October.
But the water is chilly and sharks swim in the shallows. Ambulance workers say they treated three volunteers for hypothermia on Wednesday, with some people choosing T-shirts over wetsuits in the water.
After six hours in the water, with only an hour’s break, Zoe Kerr described a day of hope and heartbreak. Her emotions were raw.
“When I got here this morning there were lots of pilot whales still on the beach and I’ve seen them get taken away and that was really confronting. But then I was in the water, and I felt hopeful, I was with a mum and her bub, but the mum just kept rotating.
“We were given a pink band, we were really worried, really hopeful. Watching people let go was one of the hardest things I have ever seen.”
Peter Hartley, the incident controller at Western Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, said volunteers had struggled to leave pilot whales they had cared for during the day.
In the background, tractors carted those that had died overnight on Tuesday up and along the beach so researchers could take blubber, blood and teeth samples. They hope to find out why the mammals became stranded.
On Wednesday afternoon, volunteers corralled the surviving animals out to sea and splashed in the water to try and stop them from returning to shore. But they subsequently beached again.
The tractors, meanwhile, were replaced with larger trucks that were loaded with carcasses to be taken to landfill.
Back in the lab, Murdoch University marine biologist Dr Joshua Smith says the reason pilot whales strand themselves remains a mystery. He says it seems to be becoming more prevalent and pilot whales strand more than other species.
‘It is pretty incredible from a scientific basis’
Five years ago, more than 130 pilot whales died in a mass stranding in Hamelin Bay south of Perth.
The largest beaching in WA happened in 1996 when 320 long-finned pilot whales stranded themselves in Dunsborough.
“We do know that whales can come unstuck on long, gradual, sloping seabeds where a navigational error suddenly puts them in shallow water,” Smith says.
“Another theory is that the huddle and then stranding were a response to sonar noises from deep water vessels, but being where these pilot whales were in shallow coastal waters, it would be highly unlikely those noises could have reached them.”
WA’s environment minister, Reece Whitby, says researchers from across Australia were baffled by the remarkable behaviour of the animals in the hours leading up to the stranding on Tuesday.
Drone footage captured the pod grouped together in a heart shape before stranding themselves, which experts from across the nation had not witnessed before.
“It is pretty incredible from a scientific basis in terms of learning about strandings.”
‘It takes an emotional toll’
As the sun set on Cheynes beach on Wednesday night, there were harrowing scenes as volunteers who had fought so hard to push the surviving pilot whales to sea were forced to bring them to shore once more.
The pod had beached itself again further down the beach. Hope was now lost and the rescue mission had turned into a welfare operation.
“Sadly, the decision had to be made to euthanise the remaining whales to avoid prolonging their suffering,” Parks and Wildlife said in a Facebook post. “It was a difficult decision for all involved however the welfare of the whales had to take precedence.”
Perth Zoo veterinarian Taylor Hawkins was part of a team of six working to triage the pilot whales as they were placed in slings and carried by teams back to the sand. With the animals in a state of distress for more than 24 hours, their welfare was the key priority.
“That is a really big concern, they have been exerting energy for this whole time and that is a lot for any species to take on,” Hawkins says.
“Everyone here in the past 24 hours has done an exceptional job and a lot of people have been here overnight – for everyone it takes a whole emotional toll.”
As darkness took hold on Wednesday night, shots rang out at the nearby caravan park. The battle for this pod was over.
