Crews with bulldozers buried 49 pilot whales in sand dunes on an isolated northern New Zealand beach Sunday after rescuers managed to save only nine from a group that was stranded on the beach for two days. Indigenous Maori elders chanted prayers over the carcasses before bulldozers stripped open a trench above the waterline to bury the mammals, which died despite efforts by more than 200 rescuers. The rescuers refloated 13 of the beached whales Saturday after a mass stranding of 58 of them on remote Karikari Beach.

New Zealand rescue teams save 9 of 58 whales stranded on beach. (2010, August 23). Manila Bulletin, p. 16.