© AFP: Toshifumi Kitamura Residents of Hokato attempt to save melon-headed whales along a 10 kilometre stretch of beach.
On Friday rescuers had been battling to stop the creatures' skin from drying out as they lay on a beach in Hokota, about 100 kilometres north-east of Tokyo, while some were being carried in slings back towards the ocean.
But as darkness fell, local officials in Hokota called off the rescue effort. They said they had only been able to save three of the animals that had beached.
The rest of the creatures, a member of the dolphin family usually found in the deep ocean, had either died or were dying, they said.
"It was becoming dark and too dangerous to continue the rescue work at this beach, where we could not bring heavy equipment," said an unnamed Hokota city official.
"Many people volunteered to rescue them but the dolphins became very, very weak."
"Only three of them have been successfully returned to the sea, as far as we can confirm," he added.
Earlier, television footage showed several animals from the large pod had been badly cut, with many having deep gashes on their skin.
© AFP: Toshifumi KitamuraA local resident pours a bucket of seawater over a melon-headed whale, a member of the dolphin family, beached on Hokato's shore.
A number of the creatures had died, he said, and were being buried.
The pod was stretched out along a roughly 10-kilometre-long stretch of beach in Hokota, Ibaraki, where they had been found by locals early on Friday morning.
"They are alive. I feel sorry for them," a man told public broadcaster NHK, as others were seen ferrying buckets of seawater to the stranded animals and pouring it over them.
Massive efforts were required to get the three that survived back into the water.
Rescuers wrapped them with blankets before putting them on a coastguard vessel. The animals were then taken to waters about 10km from the shore and released, according to NHK.
While the reason for the beaching was unclear, Tadasu Yamadao, a researcher at the National Museum of Nature and Science, said the dolphins might have got lost.
"Sonar waves the dolphins emit might have been absorbed in the shoals, which could cause them to lose their sense of direction," he told the Yomiuri Shimbun.
© AFP: Toshifumi KitamuraWorkers remove a dead melon-headed whale that beached on the Japanese shore.
"We see one or two whales washing ashore a year, but this may be the first time to find over 100 of them on a beach," a coastguard official said.
Despite international pressure, Japan hunts minke and pilot whales off its own coast, and has for many years also pursued the mammals in the Antarctic Ocean using a scientific exemption to the international moratorium on whaling.
Japan also defies international opinion with the slaughter of hundreds of dolphins in a bay near the southern whaling town of Taiji.
The killing was brought to worldwide attention with the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove.
Source: AFP
Deep gashes?