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Posted by on October 20, 2005 at 13:51:50:
A 28-foot humpback whale washed up dead in Peril Strait near Sitka last weekend with wounds that suggest it had been bashed in the head by a ship, according to scientists that raced a rising tide to examine the carcass on Tuesday.
A necropsy found extensive hemorrhaging and bleeding along the whale's lower right jaw, said Dr. Carrie Goertz, a veterinarian with Alaska SeaLife Center who led a team of three vets at the scene. Other wounds appeared in the muscles behind its head.
“It looked like there had been a lot of damage before death,” Goertz said Thursday. “It's highly possible that there was a dislocation or a fracture in the neck area.” The death of the male calf marked the first known humpback killed from a ship strike this season, said biologist Aleria Jensen, stranding coordinator for NOAA Fisheries in Alaska. The agency had received 12 reports from mariners of possible whale strikes, but no confirmed deaths. About one humpback a season dies after getting struck by a ship. The species is listed under the Endangered Species Act, and cannot be approached within 100 yards by boats under a federal whale-watching law. The strike is under investigation by federal agents, Jensen said.
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