Project Jonah and The Whale

We love seeing whales in the ocean about as much as we hate seeing them stranded on our shores. Britt Coker talks to a local charity with the self-designated task of getting the beached mammals back where they belong.

It’s a record we’d rather not have, or ever exceed. In February 2017, about 650 pilot whales stranded on Farewell Spit. The third largest stranding ever recorded in New Zealand. On one hand, the spit with its long and sandy outstretched hook is, yes, a unique and fragile ecological ecosystem, but also, a pesky pain in the neck for whales. Their use of echolocation to navigate their way through the ocean means they don’t get great readings from that long sandbar until they’re stranded on it. We think. This geographical anomaly is generally accepted as the main reason strandings happen in this part of the country and the same reason Project Jonah HQ relocated to Nelson from Auckland, six months ago.

The charity has been operating for almost 50 years, its name taken from the biblical story of Jonah and the whale, though in that tale it is Jonah who is stranded (in the whale) and not the other way around. Perhaps surprisingly, considering the vast number of volunteers involved, it is just a three-person ops team that manages strandings and their 24/7 hotline (0800 4 WHALE). They’re
a busy trio too, with an average of 1-2 strandings a week nationwide, totalling around 300 whales stranded a year. Except, of course, for years like 2017. Louisa Hawkes, communication and volunteer manager, recalls the Farewell Spit experience.

"It was a massive community effort and it tested our systems… Six hundred and fifty whales is just nuts. It was in the peak of summer before Covid when we had tourists everywhere. And the community came together, our people came together. We called people from Wellington and Christchurch as well as the locals. It took two and a half days working with everybody there and we got most of them out, which we’re pretty proud of.”

One third of the whales died overnight but over the following days they were able to refloat all of the remaining animals, bar twenty. Without human assistance, the story would have been very different. Approximately 1000 volunteers a day, plus 650 whales. Not just people working with whales, but logistics around traffic control, food donations, portaloos, communications and first aid. Essentially in just a matter of hours the team oversaw a spontaneous community event begetting an extraordinary sight and an extraordinary experience.

People gravitated in their droves because of an endearing human quality to feel compassion for another living thing that we do not relate to, or even coexist with. But there is bittersweetness in a whale stranding because while the compulsion to help is strong, you are walking into a situation that promises no happy endings. It is an experience that is asking you to invest your time, but not your emotions - which is nigh on impossible as you sit with, and talk quietly to, a stranded animal.

“I think everybody’s experience at a whale stranding is different and it really depends on what’s happening for them at the time. For someone who may have lost someone significant in their life, whether it’s an animal or a relative in the last year, a stranding can be quite difficult, or it can be really freeing because they get to assist something that is distressed and help it get back into its natural environment. For others, their experience can be overwhelming because they’ve learned about it in the classroom environment but when it comes to real life it can be a little bit confronting, but within 10 to 15 minutes we tend to see them going from standing offside to talking to everybody with the knowledge that they have, and leading,” says Louisa.

“It’s really personal for each person, but we’re grateful that they are there and genuinely wanting to do something to help. The feedback that we get is that it’s life changing.”

The Project Jonah team try to minimise the risk of attachment. Asking people to move into different roles, to not stay with one whale for too long. They try to be as empathetic towards the saviours as to those they are trying to save.

“We’re really mindful to talk to people when they are with the whales and to pre-empt what’s going to happen next, so before the refloat happens we will go an hour beforehand and let people know the water is coming in, this is what’s going to happen. ‘At some point you’re going to have to step away from your whale
so now is your time to say goodbye’, because people do get attached… If the whale ends up being euthanized it can be quite confronting for people.”

Saying goodbye at dusk happens for everyone regardless, as there are strict protocols in place when it comes to staying overnight with stranded whales. The mammals attract sharks and stingrays, and while rare, the flick of a whale tail has necessitated a few ACC claims over the years. So they are left to their own devices and sometimes when everyone returns at sunrise, the animals have vanished like magic, returning to the sea on the night’s high tide.

When the team isn’t managing whale strandings, they are busy travelling to coastal towns and cities, running training courses for people interested in becoming a Project Jonah volunteer. They have seven rescue trailers based around the country with an especially big one here in Nelson which includes training gear and all kinds of things you need to get whales off beaches and back into the water. Inflatable rescue pontoons, for example, which were invented by a member of Project Jonah and are now used for whale strandings all around the world.

So, what do you do if you come across a stranded whale or dolphin? Call Project Jonah or DOC. Keep calm, keep it cool, don’t pour water down it’s blowhole, and stay away from the tail. Yes, 10% of their calls are for an orca that turn out to be a seal, or – at Tahuna Beach this year – a whale that turned out to be a marker buoy. But they’re happy to run with that old adage, better safe than sorry, and an optimist would see the misidentifications as a good test of the charity’s response process, which can be lightening quick.

They work closely with DOC but the government department has limited human resources, while Project Jonah can call into a conch shell and 5000 volunteers around the country will lift their heads and stare into the distance. If you want to be added to their volunteer database, Project Jonah will be holding a Marine Mammal Medic Course in Nelson in February. After a couple of hours of theory, you’ll head to the beach for a practice drill.

“We have life-size, life-weight training animals, so we have a pilot whale that we fill with water and it becomes two tonnes, and we have an inflatable dolphin that we fill with water and it becomes 200 kilos. We get everyone in their wetsuits practising how to use the equipment that we’ve taught them about, usually on Tahunanui Beach, and despite having flags up and volunteers in hi-vis talking to people, we still sometimes cause a bit of a traffic jam with cars driving along Rocks Road and seeing a whale in the water and lots of people working around it.”

Project Jonah relies heavily on donations from the public and business community, and they are grateful for support from trusts and grant bodies that assist them with the larger operating costs like the education officers based around the country (there’s one here in Nelson) to visit schools and kindergartens. Children are, Louisa says, ‘tiny sponges’.

“The feedback that we get from teachers and parents in the days after is they won’t stop talking about whales, and they remember to stay away from the tail. We do some singing with them, so the kids will sing the songs around the house. Probably one of the nicest bits of feedback we had recently is a child now picks up three bits of rubbish on their way to school each day because we talked about how litter has an impact on the marine environment. It’s really encouraging to see how curious children can be when you phrase something that, to adults is absolutely terrifying, but in a way that enables them to be creative and innovative, it allows space for them to come up with some cool solutions.”

Louisa thinks there is a curiosity around cetaceans that attracts us to them.

“Not many people will get to interact with them in their lifetime... If you do see dolphins or whales out on a boat or at the beach, there is an element of mystery around them, and people are intrigued by that. So, I think when we can see that they are suffering we know that it’s unnatural and uncomfortable for them and so we want to help. It’s a real driver for people to travel two hours over Takaka Hill to a scene that might be devastating, but they turn up anyway.”

While accurately predicting a whale stranding is impossible, not so long ago they did have a greater sense of when one was likely to happen based on the seasons. But the planet is not so big on being predictable these days.

“Things are changing and so we have to have our systems prepared for everything, all the time. Massey University is doing some really interesting studies to look at trends and overlaps. And in the current study they’re looking at solar flares, working with NASA and the stranding history to see if there’s any overlapping with that, but there’s no results today.”

What is certainly more predictable however, is that whenever and wherever that next mass whale stranding takes place, humans in their numbers will be heading there to help in whatever way they can.

Find out more about the Nelson Marine Mammal Medic course on 17th Feb 2024 - at projectjonah.org.nz/medic