72 whales die in mass stranding in Australia: official

Seventy-two whales have died after becoming stranded on rocks in southern Australia, one week after 53 of the giant animals died nearby in a similar beaching, an official said Sunday.

The long-finned pilot whales are believed to have beached themselves at the rocky and remote Sandy Cape on the west coast of the southern island of Tasmania on Saturday.

"There are 72 deceased animals," Chris Arthur of Tasmania's Parks and Wildlife Service told AFP.

Arthur said rescuers had shepherded 32 more whales, which had been trapped in a channel offshore among reefs, to safety using a small boat and these animals were now swimming strongly.

Tasmanian officials were alerted to the beaching early Saturday and a helicopter inspection of the remote area showed that 12 were still alive, despite being badly cut by the rocks.

A rescue team reached the area Sunday but found only two of the pilot whales, which can reach up to more than seven metres (20 feet) in length and weigh up to three tonnes, alive.

"There were two alive in the rocky shore, but they died earlier this afternoon," Arthur said.

Rescuers had been afraid that the whales would not survive the night as they would have thrashed heavily on the rocks, unlike the 64 animals which beached on a sandy Tasmanian beach the previous week.

Eleven of those animals were saved after they were transported to another beach and dragged into deep water.

"On sand they tend to lie fairly quietly but when they land on rocks and in amongst boulders they thrash, they cut themselves. There's a lot of blood loss," the parks and wildlife service's Rosemary Gales told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Saturday.

"We know from previous experience that when pilot whales strand on rocks, which these ones have, they die very quickly."

There are a number of whale strandings in Tasmania every year, but there is debate among scientists over causes the animals to beach themselves.