HAUNTED BY THE TRAUMATIC SIGHT OF SUFFERING

THE sight sand sounds connected with the whale tragedy unfolding on Tasmania’ s West Coast are hard to describe–or forget.

Hundreds of animals flailing about in shallow water, as others die around them, is heart breaking to watch.

The beautiful scenic back drop makes it even harder, somehow.

This is not the kind of whale watching I had dreamt of.

Watching the level of distressed activity died own as the poor animals become exhausted and give up, or slowly suffocate, is traumatic.

The sounds they make as they call out to each other– and perhaps to us humans watching hopelessly from the shore–are piercing and tragic.

When I arrived at Macquarie Heads on Monday afternoon, the whales were making a real din and splashing their tails in the shallow water.

By Tuesday morning, things were much quieter. About 90 were dead and others had seemingly all but given up the fight to live.

Rescuers made their way out to those they hoped could be saved and the animals lay almost still and compliant as teams slid slings under the whales’ bodies.

I decided to walk the 2 km from the Macquarie Heads camp ground around to Ocean Beach where a small pod of about 30 whales were washed upon the sand. As the caretaker of the camp ground said :“It is th e feeling of hopelessness that is the hardest. Of not being able to save them or at least put them out of their misery.

“There were still two alive when I went out there. If I’ d had a rifle I would have shot them. They were on their last legs and really suffering ,” he said.

Upon arriving at Ocean Beach, I was first struck by the beauty of this stretch of remote coastline.

No-one else was around and the sand stretched for miles. Macquarie Heads and the Gordon River were in sight and birds of all types bob bed along the shore.

Then I noticed several big, desolate shape son the sand.

Lapping at their motion less bodies was the same water that had brought the minto Macquarie Harbour and away from the deep oceans they need to survive.

Four pilot whales, about 3 m long, lay on the beach in front of me.

They were dead, but were still complete–glossy black animals with stillbright eyes and white teeth.

I touched one and it felt like fine leather. I said‘ sorry’ to the whale and walked up to the others.

The saddest thing about whale stranding sis we don’ t know why they happen and the animals’ very social nature means freed whales will often return to their distressed pod–and get stranded again, rather than abandon their family.