NEW ZEALAND – Rescuers were trying desperately yesterday to save scores of pilot whales after a mass stranding on a New Zealand beach thought to be the largest in decades.

At least 300 of the more than 400 whales that beached themselves on Farewell Spit had already died.

Around 50 pilot whales were still stuck in the shallows when rescuers had to leave the beach on Friday night as darkness made it too risky to continue. Another 50 were being monitored just offshore.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) discovered 416 pilot whales had beached themselves overnight Thursday at Farewell Spit in Golden Bay at the top of the South Island, with more than 70 per cent dying by the time dawn broke on Friday.

DOC staff and dozens of volunteers made frantic efforts all day to save the remaining 100 whales.

Peter Wiles, who was one of the first volunteers to reach Farewell Spit, said that the white bellies of the whale corpses were lined up on the sand and floating in the shallows.

“It is one of the saddest things I have seen, that many sentient creatures just wasted on the beach.”

As Friday morning wore on, an urgent plea was issued for locals to drop work and school commitments and head to the remote beach to save the whales, bringing towels, buckets and sheets to keep them cool, calm and wet.

Andrew Lamason, a team leader for the DOC Takaka area, said the stranding was the largest in living memory, and although he had “no clue” why the whales had beached themselves this time, Golden Bay was conducive to strandings because of its shallow bay, which made it difficult for whales to swim out once they’d entered.

At high tide, at 10.30am, the 100 surviving whales were successfully refloated, but early in the afternoon at low tide 90 of them re-beached themselves. DOC staff and up to 500 volunteers were now focused on keeping the surviving whales as healthy as possible until the next high tide.

Lamason said it was common for whales involved in a mass stranding to re-beach themselves, because they were social animals and would stay in close proximity to their pod, the majority of which were now lying dead on the beach.

“We are trying to swim the whales out to sea and guide them but they don’t really take directions, they go where they want to go. Unless they get a couple of strong leaders who decide to head out to sea, the remaining whales will try and keep with their pod on the beach.”

Lamason said whale strandings, which were common in Golden Bay, were an emotionally exhausting event, and anyone who wasn’t fit and strong and equipped to cope with the trauma were advised to stay away from the beach and not participate in the rescue effort.

“It is cold, it’s wet and some of us have been in and out of the water for nine hours now, we can only cope with robust volunteers, not ones that are going to break down, which happens quite often.” he said.

“We are in the farthest corner of the universe here but now volunteers have started turning up en masse and there are hundreds of people here and they have brought food and supplies so they are prepared to be here all day and all night if needed.”

The beach was still littered with the bodies of the nearly 300 dead pilot whales but plans for disposing of their bodies naturally at sea were on hold while rescuers “concentrated on the living”, Lamason said.

Conservation Minister Maggie Barry praised people’s efforts to save the whales.

The stranding is the third largest recorded since data started being collected in the 1800s, and the largest mainland stranding.

1000 whales stranded on the Chatham islands in 1918, and 450 on Great Barrier Island in 1985.

According to Project Jonah, a whale rescue group, New Zealand has one of the highest rates of whale strandings in the world, and on average about 300 whales and dolphins beach themselves on New Zealand shores every year.