World’s rarest whale washes up at remote fishing village: ‘This is huge’

One of the world’s rarest sea creatures is believed to have been found washed up near a small fishing village in New Zealand. Experts have hauled the beached whale’s lifeless body and placed it in cold storage so more can be learned about it.

Discovered on a remote beach in Otago on the country’s South Island, at Taiari Mouth, only six examples of spade-toothed whales have been examined by scientists since the 1800s. Experts have called the discovery “huge”.

Two of the incidents were in the last 20 years, and also in New Zealand — a mother and calf stranding at the Bay of Plenty in 2010, and another in 2017 at Gisborne. No live sightings have ever been confirmed.

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An image supplied to Yahoo News by the Department of Conservation (DOC), shows the male whale’s three-metre long body being hauled from the beach on July 4. It announced the discovery on Monday once its body was safely in storage and the Maori Rūnaka (tribal council) had been consulted.

Whale body parts are significant to the country’s Indigenous population, but they are frequently stolen. In May, thieves used a chainsaw to remove the jaw of a 15-metre-long sperm whale at Oreti Beach on the country’s far south coast.

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The DOC acknowledged the spade-toothed whale’s cultural importance and said learning about the species would be a “shared journey” that would include Maori mātauraka (wisdom).

Speaking about the discovery, DOC’s coastal Otago operations manager Gabe Davies said much is still to be learned about the species.

“Spade-toothed whales are one of the most poorly known large mammalian species of modern times,” he said.

“Since the 1800s, only six samples have ever been documented worldwide, and all but one of these was from New Zealand. From a scientific and conservation point of view, this is huge.”

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