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Yesterday, teachers and students at Te Uki Ou School held a funeral of a different kind. It was the burial of a rare Cuviers beaked whale found at Kakera at Takitumu on the southside of Rarotonga.
The four and a half metre whale which the children named Kakera, was found stranded in the lagoon opposite the school playground.
It died shortly after it was discovered unharmed although it's jaw was completely smashed up.
According to whale research person Nan Hauser who was called onto the scene and arrived just after the whale died, the smashed jaw may have been the result of the mammal being bashed into the reef by waves.
School principal June Hosking said she and the older boys at the school had gone into the lagoon earlier to try and save the whale but to no avail.
Later Hauser peformed necropsy or post mortem on the whale to determine the real cause of death while some of the older children hung around, watched and asked questions.
Kakera was buried in a shallow grave on the beach amidst prayers and singing by the children. "God made the birds in the sky, animals on the land and creatures of the sea," they sang.
Hauser hopes to exhume the whale's grave in a few years to do more testing on the whale.
Another whale of the same species was stranded in Arorangi on the western side of Rarotonga last year and was called Temata. |
