Carcass of a 79-foot blue whale was found washed up on Friday at Agate Beach in Bolinas along the Marin County Coast, about 10 miles north of San Francisco, California.
According to experts, the animal died to blunt force trauma following a collision with a large boat. Experts from the Marine Mammal Center also performed autopsy of the animal and found broken ribs, a fractured spine and trauma to her skull.
“It is a tragedy that this whale’s story ended due to vessel collision,” Barbie Halaska, a research assistant at the Marine Mammal Center, said in a statement.
“We found out that it was blunt force trauma due to a boat strike,” said Halaska
“The whole left side of her body was damaged. We found 10 broken ribs and 10 fractured vertebrae near the tail and mid-body.”
“These types of examinations have enabled the scientific community to make recommendations for slower shipping speeds and route changes, and hopefully that will help future whales.”
According to reports, this particular whale was seen in 1999 swimming off the California coast. A few years back, it was also seen swimming with a calf.
Halaska said the whale will be left on the beach to decompose or eaten by birds. There is a large reef off the beach, which is adjacent to Point Reyes National Seashore, and “there’s no way you could get a vessel in there to tow it out.”
“It would be very tricky,” she said.
According to marine experts, ship strikes are a leading cause of whale deaths. Last October, a dead blue whale had washed up on Westmoor Beach in Daly City. That whale had died from a skull fracture due to collision with a ship.
Halaska says some cargo ships are so big in size that their operators don’t know when they hit a whale.
“It might slow down their speed one or two knots, but nothing they would notice,” she said.
“These are huge boats. People who have come into port with whales on the bow of their ships have told us they had no idea.”
Marine Mammal Center experts said this whale relatively in intact condition, and they were able to take useful tissue samples. They also removed the stomach, liver, an eye, and some other organs to find if it had any diseases, whether it had high levels of toxins, what it was eating these days.
“The opportunity to perform a necropsy on a carcass in this good of condition will help contribute to our baseline data on the species,” Halaska said.
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