Holidaymakers joined the rescue effort, covering the whales with towels and pouring buckets of water over them to prevent them from overheating.

Dozens of volunteers spent hours with the whales, keeping them cool with water-soaked towels

Nine of the mammals died but forty-six were re-floated at high tide

It was the largest mass stranding of whales since the mid-1980s

Biologists believe that some of the whales may be disoriented and could swim back into shallow waters