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| Photo Credit: AP. |
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian wildlife authorities are investigating the deaths of 14 young sperm whales that were found beached on an island off of the southeastern coast, officials said Tuesday.
The whales
were discovered Monday afternoon on King Island, part of the state of Tasmania
in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania’s northern coast, the state
Department of Natural Resources and Environment said in a statement.
A government
Marine Conservation Program team traveled to the island Tuesday and was
conducting necropsies of the whales to try to determine their cause of death.
Photos
distributed by the department showed whales lying on their sides in shallow
water on the rocky shore of the island.
Authorities
were planning to conduct an aerial survey to determine whether there were any
other whales in the area.
The
department said it is not unusual for sperm whales to be sighted in Tasmania
and the area where they were discovered on the beach was within their normal
range and habitat.
“While further inquiries are yet to be carried
out, it is possible the whales were part of the same bachelor pod -– a group of
younger male sperm whales associating together after leaving the maternal group,”
the Environment Department said.
In the
meantime, surfers and swimmers were being warned to avoid the immediate area in
case the corpses of the whales attract sharks to the waters nearby.
Two years
ago, about 470 long-finned pilot whales were found beached on sandbars off of
Tasmania’s west coast in the largest mass-stranding on record in Australia.
After a
weeklong effort, 111 of those whales were rescued but the rest died.