New Zealand: Monster of Sea Shocks Beachgoers

© Dennis Loveridge
Extra Large: The 22.3m whale that washed up on Waiinu Beach at the weekend. The man in the background is standing on a four-wheeler motorcycle to see over its back.

Residents of Waitotara were in for a big surprise when they went down to the beach on Saturday.

Late Friday or early Saturday morning a 22.3m-long whale washed up on Waiinu beach, about 1.5km south of the Waitotara River mouth.

Although it is not uncommon for whales to wash up on the beach, this was the largest one local residents have seen.

One woman said the whales they saw usually were smaller and a different species to the one found this weekend.

This one is believed to be a pygmy blue whale.

A neighbour had told them where it was, and she had gone down to the beach to have a look on Saturday morning.

The woman said the giant mammal was "pretty awe-inspiring".

"It was just amazing. I've not seen anything like it. I didn't want to leave it," she said.

The whale was so tall that, at 1.57m (5ft 2in) herself, she could not see over it.

Whanganui Department of Conservation biodiversity programme manager Jim Campbell said identification was a best guess, going on its size and the shape of its fins.

It was dead when it washed up, he said.

The pygmy blue whale is a baleen whale - meaning it is a filter feeder, rather than having teeth - and is a smaller subspecies of the blue whale.

If it was a pygmy blue whale, it was reasonably rare and was, to his knowledge, the only one of its kind to have washed up on this coastline for at least 30 years.

It was not the largest of the whales to have washed up on our coastline.

Some sperm whales in the past had been bigger in bulk.

But it was one of the longer ones, he said.

It was hard to gauge how old the whale was but, if it was a pygmy blue, it was fully grown, he said.

A DNA sample would reveal the gender of the animal and confirm what kind of whale it was.

Pictures had been sent to whale specialist Anton van Helden from Te Papa.

Mr Campbell said it was possible the whale had simply died of old age, or it may have swallowed a plastic bag or other debris and starved to death.

DoC was still in discussions with local iwi as to what to do with the whale.

The options were to leave it, as it was quite far up the beach, or bury it, he said.

Because it was so big, they were unlikely to attempt to do any dissection on the whale and, as it was still sitting in the tide, it was hard to get to, he said.

Mr Campbell said he hoped to go back to the beach and finish taking measurements yesterday.

Did you take any pictures of the whale? Send them to us at news@wanganuichronicle.co.nz and we will put them in an online gallery