The pilot whales had been discovered Wednesday stranded on an uncovered seashore alongside the coast of Tasmania.
Rescue efforts are ongoing to save lots of the remaining whales.
“We’re primarily targeted this morning on actually stepping into that rescue operation and getting [the whales] launched,” Brendon Clark of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service instructed the Australia Broadcasting Company on Thursday.
“We’re aware that a few of them could re-beach themselves and so we’ll be monitoring that.”
Rescuers had beforehand estimated that about half of the whales had been nonetheless alive.
That is the second mass stranding of whales to have taken place in Tasmania this week after greater than a dozen sperm whales, largely younger males and believed to be a part of the identical bachelor pod, had been discovered lifeless on one other seashore.
Instances of whale strandings have baffled marine scientists for many years.
Tasmania’s largest stranding was in 2020 when greater than 450 pilot whales had been discovered.