Wildlife officials in Australia say about 230 whales were found stranded on the western shore of Tasmania on Tuesday.
The Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service said the pod appear to be pilot whales are stranded on Ocean Beach on a sand flat inside Macquarie Harbour
The agency said that at least half of them are presumed to be still alive.
The agency said that marine conservation experts from the Department of Natural Resources and Environment were heading to the scene and would devise a plan once they assessed the situation.
Volunteers are not needed at the moment, but if they are, the agency said they would request them "through various avenues."
News of the whales being stranded comes just two days after 14 youth sperm whales were found beached on King Island, the Associated Press reported.
According to the news outlet, pilot whales are notorious for stranding in mass numbers, but why they do it is not entirely understood.
In 2020, Tasmania saw a mass stranding of about 470 long-finned pilot whales beached on sandbars off of Tasmania's west coast, making it the country's largest stranding event on record, the Associated Press reported.
It took officials a week to rescue the whales, of which only 111 survived.
