Good ideas people. This article confirms our suspicions on one of the three:
"SHIP KILLS BLUE WHALE"
Although blue whales are making a remarkable recovery from the
devastation meted out during the peak whaling years of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, the endangered species still occasionally
runs afoul of human activities. The blue whale found dead in the Santa
Barbara Channel on Tuesday, September 11 was confirmed to have been
killed by a large vessel traveling through the shipping lanes in the
channel.
Researchers from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History,
working with the Channel Islands Marine and Wildlife Institute (CIMWI)
and the County of Ventura Public Works Department, performed a necropsy
on the whale, burying under the beach at Faria County Park what remains
werent kept for research. According to Paul Collins, the Natural
History Museums curator of vertebrate zoology, relatively minor
exterior lacerations were seen initially. However, as the research team
peeled back layers of blubber and delved deeper into the carcass of the
deceased animal, significant bruising, many broken vertebrae, and a
severed spinal cord confirmed that it was killed by a ship. The
abdomen was full of blood from major damage to the organs, Collins
said. These fresh bleeds were consistent with a ship strike.
Collins explained that they received a call from a research vessel
from Oregon which was tagging blue whales for tracking
purposes that one was floating in the channel near the northwest end
of Santa Rosa Island. A National Geographic film crew was aboard and
filmed the sighting, including underwater shots that showed several
sharks feeding on the underside of the carcass. During the necropsy,
we measured one shark bite as being 22 inches across, Collins said.
Although Collins and his team were alerted to the animals presence
on Tuesday, it took until Wednesday evening to gain the permits
required from the National Park Service to land the whale on Santa Rosa
Island. By that time, it had washed all the way to Ventura County and
onto the beach at Hobsons County Park. The necropsy indicated that the
animal had been dead for almost a week and a half.
Collinss necropsy team was comprised of himself, Sausalito Marine
Mammal Center veterinarian Frances Guillard, CIMWI president Sam Dover,
his vice president Greg Cocklin, and the Natural History Museums
entomologist, Michael Caterino. Collins recalled a dead whale he worked
with in 1980 at Hollister Ranch, saying it took nearly a month and a
half to remove the skeleton. Heavy equipment certainly helps, he
said, referring to the machines provided by public works. We couldnt
have gotten the head off in this amount of time without it.
The skull and much of the skeleton of the whale described by
Collins as a 72-foot female, approximately three to five years
old were taken to CIMWIs headquarters, located at the old Vista del
Mar School site near Gaviota. For the next year and a half, researchers
from the Natural History Museum and CIMWI will study the skeleton and
prepare it for display.
The Vista del Mar isnt abandoned anymore, like people thought it
was, Dover said. Were developing a stranding center up there. He
described the site as ideal for their work because of the available
space and its distance from developed areas. There the smell of
decaying cetacean parts should not raise protests from neighbors.
As for the significance of the blue whale killed last week, Collins
said the incident was both good and bad. It was good because it
indicates an increase in the number of whales out there, he said, and
bad because we dont like to see any endangered animals killed.
According to recent studies, the population of blue whales in the
Northern Hemisphere is currently between 3,000 and 4,000. Pre-whaling
estimates indicate that their numbers were once as high as 350,000
worldwide.
The shipping lines are meant to be very busy of the Californian coast, namely the Santa Barbara Channel. This seems the most plausible death for a number of them, but I think we are just going to have to wait for the judgment by the scientists.
I would have thought the whales would echolocate the positioning of ships, but that's where sonic interference may have chipped in. It really is quite disturbing, and this latest event should spark concern about the risk large ships pose to the graceful giants of the sea.
- Knights -