A bike ride along a famous Hawke’s Bay coast turned into a whale of a rescue mission for one tourist.
Former Hawke’s Bay Today photographer Andrew Labett – now living in Lower Hutt – was cycling to Cape Kidnappers during a Hawke’s Bay holiday on Saturday when he came across a 3 to 4m-long beached whale around the corner from the Clifton Marine Club.
Two women had contacted the Department of Conservation (DoC) by the time Labett arrived and were using their hands to dig it out.
Labett said the whale was lying on its side and had suffered what appeared to be superficial bleeding to its tail.
Shortly afterwards, about 10 people came from the Clifton Marine Club to help refloat it.
Labett said he and the group started pushing the whale towards the water each time a small wave hit it.
After 10 minutes of pushing, Labett didn’t think the whale would be saved.
“It’s one of those things where you don’t know what the best thing to do is,” he said.
“I thought ‘this is not going to happen. We need a digger’.”
Labett said he was concerned the group might be injuring the whale’s internal organs by moving it.
“But we just got on with it basically, and we just pushed forward each wave that came in.”
Labett said the group rolled the whale upright into the water and spent about 30 minutes nudging it forward slowly with each wave until it was floated in shallow water.
“It flapped its tail around and it just went – it just swam off.”
With the animal making a quick exit once refloated, Labett said he felt like the whale was “probably” all right.
Labett had seen sperm whale carcasses washed up around New Zealand but had never participated in a rescue.
“Hopefully it’ll be the last,” he said. “In the way that I hope it doesn’t happen often.”
Once the whale disappeared into the sea, the rescuers shook hands and carried on with their day.
A DoC spokeswoman said the whale appeared to be a young female southern bottlenose whale or Hyperoodon planifrons, the second-largest species of beaked whale in New Zealand waters, growing to about 7.5m.
DoC senior science adviser Anton van Helden said southern bottlenose whales fed almost exclusively on squid and large pods of the animals had been seen around Antarctica.
Southern bottlenose whales, van Helden said, had small tusk teeth in the tip of the lower jaw that only erupted in mature males, and tiny vestigial teeth embedded in the gums of both jaws of young animals that appeared to be either lost or reabsorbed as animals matured.
They come from the beaked whale family, among the least-known groups of mammals due to their deep-sea habitat and elusive behaviour.
New Zealand is thought to be a global hotspot for beaked whales, with 13 different species found in the country’s waters.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany and New Zealand.