Australian wildfire officers have been forced to make a difficult decision after 150 false killer whale floated to a remote beach in Tasmania, Australia.
As reported by CNN, the whales were seen near the Arthur River on the island’s west coast late Tuesday, according to Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
By Wednesday, it was revealed that only 90 survived, although the rescuers attempted to send two back to the sea, wind and rough seas returned them back to the shore.
Shelley Graham, an incident controller with Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service shared, "It’s quite rough, and the animals just can’t get past the break to get out. They just keep turning around and coming back towards the beach."
As per the latest reports, authorities have decided to euthanize the animals to end their suffering, as they have become quite distressed.
Marine biologist, Dr. Tom Montgomery turned to his X account to reveal that the whales will be shot down, instead of using usual method of medications due to their massive size.
In similar cases, machinery is used to send back the animals to the sea, but sending equipment’s to the remote and inaccessible location turned out to be impossible.
Notably, the last time so many false killer whales were stranded in Tasmania was 50 years ago in June 1974 when a pod of 160 to 170 were found at Black River beach on the island’s northern coast, with no record of how many of them actually survived.
