The latest stranding of whales at Farewell Spit. Photo: Facebook / Project Jonah
A pod of pilot whales stranded at Golden Bay in the Tasman district have been successfully refloated.
Ten whales became stranded at Farewell Spit on Tuesday, but two had since died.
Department of Conservation (DOC) Golden Bay operations manager Ross Trotter said efforts to refloat the eight remaining whales began at 4.30pm on Wednesday and they were now out in deep water.
"At this stage, it's looking really positive.
"It's up to the whales now as to what they'll do tonight."
Trotter said he was confident the whales would make a full recovery after being out of the water for almost 24 hours.
"They seemed to be good once they got into the water. It's a concern they've been exposed for quite some time, but they all seem to be swimming strong.
"We've had a boat out alongside them, keeping an eye on them."
He said DOC would check on the whales in the morning to make sure they had not re-stranded.
"We'll have a team out at first light to make sure they haven't re-beached somewhere across the coastline."
He said the Farewell Spit area was notorious for whale strandings.
"It has been going on for years. There's been a lot of theories and scientific research into it but we don't know why they [the whales] strand in the first place or why they repeat strand."
DOC had received the report about 6.30pm on Tuesday about the stranding in an area known as Triangle Flat at the base of Farewell Spit.
Trotter said rescuers had not seen these whales at Farewell Spit previously. However, it was clear they had stranded in another location before.
"They are showing signs of having been sunburnt and have healed over, so possibly in the last few weeks they have been beached somewhere else."
While there were many theories about why strandings happened so often at Farewell Spit, the shape of the bay was a possible factor, he said.
A pod of pilot whales was refloated several times in December.
Not all of them survived.
Among those that did, some were seen in the area even after being refloated again.
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