One winter morning about two years ago, marine mammal scientist
Anton van Helden was driving hell-for-leather up to the far
north of New Zealand. A thirteen-and-a-half hour haul would take
him to the beach where the first pygmy killer whale to strand
itself in New Zealand was lying, and he wasn’t going to miss the
chance to collect the skeleton and perhaps tissue samples for
the Museum of New Zealand, where he worked. Partway through the
drive, he got a call. Two beaked whales had been found dead at a
place called Opape Beach. “They sounded for all the world like
Gray’s beaked whales,” he recalls, a species that washes up
relatively frequently on New Zealand’s shores, which sometimes
see several hundred whale beachings per year thanks in part to
the nation’s long coastline. “Maybe you can bury them,” he said
to the conservation department employee at the other end of the
line, “and we’ll have a look later, just to be sure.” Van Helden
gave the matter little thought until a few months had passed and
his phone