Two Waikawa Beach women were treated to a scene of horror on their early morning walk when they found hundreds of dead and dying seabirds on the shoreline.
Angela Smith and Lucy Truscott are pleading to animal shelter agencies and members of the public for help in their attempts to save as many birds as they can.
The two women routinely walked about 3.5km from Waikawa Beach to Kuku Beach and back home again each morning, only early today they came across the grisly sight of the dead and dying birds.
The birds were in such distress that Truscott, a former member of the armed forces, returned with an air rifle to humanely destroy the birds that were in distress and dying after checking with authorities that it was okay to do so first.