Last Orca to Die in the New Zealand Stranding Was Comforted by a Compassionate Bystander
New Zealanders are reacting with concern and outrage to the recent tragic death of nine orcas who stranded on their shoreline this week (International Dolphin and Whale Stranding Network), but also with touching compassion.
A Southland woman held an orca as it lay dying and crying out near Tuatapere, while the rest of its pod lay dead on the beach on Tuesday night.
Debra Drain was one of the first to reach the nine stranded mammals, near Blue Cliffs, after a tramper told her husband Jeff Drain he had seen them while walking the Hump Ridge track.
Mrs Drain said several residents raced to the beach only to find eight of the orcas had already died.
They had been pushed up against rocks, with their flesh torn from them, and the last one was still crying out, she said.
“I couldn’t leave so I hugged a dying orca as it cried for its life.” Southland Times.
And when the local Maori (the Ngai Tahu) representatives arrived, they gave the deceased orcas a traditional blessing.
more
http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/2014/02/12/last-orca-to-die-in-the-new-zealand-stranding-was-comforted-by-a-compassionate-bystander/
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Those poor orcas. What a senseless death.
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