Endangered whale turns up dead in N.S.
Posted Jul 26, 2012 05:59:14 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Scientists are working to determine what caused the death of an Atlantic right whale that has washed ashore near Clam Bay.
The badly decomposed carcass washed up last week with a a green rope coiled tightly around the tail
Scientists who went to the beach Wednesday say they can’t be sure that the rope killed the cetacean.
Tonya Wimmer of the Marine Animal Response Society tells Global News the remains will be carefully examined in hopes of finding out what happened.
“For right whales, the two main threats are being struck by vessels and being entangled in fishing gear,” she said. “So we really need to get a good handle on what happened to this animal. Why did it die? It’s not really about trying to put blame, but it’s really trying to understand what happened so we can figure out ways and work with people to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Getting snared in fishing gear can impair the whale’s ability to swim or eat, and it suffers a long, slow death.
Scientists and fishermen in Canada and the U.S. will examine the rope to try and determine its origin. They’ll also study DNA to see if the whale been previously identified.
Wimmer says the DNA could lead to a lot of other useful information.
“They do a family tree just like we do our family trees. So that’s why the DNA sampling is really important, I’m hoping, I’m crossing my fingers they can identify this animal and they might be able to say you know this is animal number such and such and we know he or she had this many offspring with this other whale, there’s that level of precision in the catalogue.”
It’s estimated only about 460 North Atlantic right whales are left in the world.
