A whale that beached itself and then died in Steuben last week has floated away, but officials still hope to find it.
The animal was an adolescent female fin whale that, despite not being fully grown, is nearly 50 feet long. A storm that lashed Maine with heavy rain and strong winds overnight into Monday morning is believed to have pulled the whale carcass back into the sea off Petit Manan Point in western Washington County.
“We don’t know where it is,” said Rosemary Seton of Allied Whale, College of the Atlantic’s marine research division that is licensed by the federal government to respond to strandings of marine mammals and turtles.
Seton, Allied Whale’s marine stranding coordinator, said it is not unusual for an animal to drift ashore and then to float away again when the tide rises and carries it away. The whale came to rest on Thanksgiving Day at around mid-tide, and though it stayed there for a few days, the high tide either Sunday night or Monday morning, along with the surf churned up by the storm, re-floated the dead whale.
“I’ve had that happen many times,” Seton said. “I guess for now we’re in a waiting game.”
Allied Whale hopes to relocate the whale and bring it ashore again, ideally at high tide, so the group can dissect the animal to see if it can figure out why it died, she said. The whale was emaciated and likely wasn’t eating. If they can find it again before it decomposes too much, they might be able to examine its trachea to see if it may have had difficulty swallowing, Seton said.
Without having the whale carcass to examine, researchers can only guess what may have killed it, even though people who saw the dead whale’s body on the beach on Sunday before it floated away have not reported any apparent signs of trauma to the whale.
“It could have been any number of things,” Seton said of why the whale died. “Most of the time we can’t determine the cause of death. To get a fresh carcass like this is rare.”
The cold water in the Gulf of Maine will help slow the whale’s decomposition, Seton said. But even if the whale does decompose to the point that clues to its death can’t be found, researchers can still collect the skeleton for other research purposes, she said.
Anyone who comes across the dead whale, or any stranded or dead marine mammal, is asked to contact Allied Whale at 207-266-1326.
Fin whales are endangered and, like all whales regardless of their numbers, are protected under federal law. Fin whales are second only to blue whales in terms of being the largest living creatures on Earth and, in the western North Atlantic ocean, are estimated to have a population of approximately 6,800 individual animals, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In addition to possible natural causes, whales also are known to die from ship strikes or entanglements in fishing gear. Most whale populations worldwide were decimated after centuries of being hunted by humans and have struggled to regain their numbers since protections were put into place in recent decades.
