Third right whale death o
f the year confirmed
The animal’s carcass was found Sunday floating 100 miles east of Nantucket
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries officials have confirmed the third North Atlantic right whale death of the year after the animal’s carcass was found Sunday floating 100 miles east of Nantucket.
The NOAA vessel Henry B. Bigelow reported sighting the whale carcass, and after a review by experts Monday, it was confirmed to be a right whale that was at least 35 feet long, according to a statement from the agency. It is the third known right whale death of 2018, according to the statement.
The body was severely decomposed, but multiple wounds were visible in photographs that indicated interactions with humans, including marks consistent with entanglement, the statement says.
NOAA scientists and Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod crew found the carcass again early Monday afternoon. Additional photographs and samples were taken by the crew of the Bigelow to help identify the whale and learn more about it, the statement says.
The already critically endangered right whales took a major hit in 2017 with the documented death of 17 animals in Canadian and U.S. waters. Those deaths — about 4 percent of the total population of about 450 animals — led to the federal announcement of an unusual mortality event, focused on the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada and waters around Cape Cod, which releases more money for research.
Scientists have linked a decline in the right whale population that began in 2010, when the peak was 481, with the unusually fast warming of the Gulf of Maine, according to a September technical memo from the Fisheries Service.
The Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team met last week to discuss ways to reduce the number of right whale deaths, focusing on the temporary closure of certain areas to fishing and the possible testing of new technologies.
On Sunday, passengers on board the Hyannis Whale Watcher witnessed a large great white shark eating off the floating carcass of a fin whale.
“She was a monster, 18 feet easily, possibly bigger,” said Joanne Jarzobski, the marine biologist on the vessel.
Jarzobski shot photographs of the shark and the whale and sent them to the state Division of Marine Fisheries.
The fin whale is the second largest animal on earth after the blue whale. It can grow to nearly 90 feet and weigh as much as 140 tons. They eat plankton and schooling fish. Dead whales are a staple of the great white shark diet. Fin whales are listed as endangered throughout their range under the Endangered Species Act, with about 2,700 of the animals in the North Atlantic but other populations in the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere, according to NOAA.
A second great white was also eating the whale, which was floating in Cape Cod Bay about 10 miles north northwest of Barnstable Harbor. The vessel stopped to view the spectacle on the way out at around noon and when they returned at 3:30 p.m.
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