Necropsy shows ship killed whale

Experts say the 53-foot fin whale found dead off Orcas Island died after it was run over by a large ship.

Led by Dr. Rich Osborne, science director of The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, a team of regional experts and local whale researchers performed a necropsy of the whale’s carcass Wednesday night. It was towed from Stuart Island’s Turn Point to the shore near the University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs, where the necropsy was done.

The team discovered the whale’s spine had been severed and its neck bone and several ribs broken. Knives were used to slice the flesh and a chain saw helped cut through its bones. The whale weighed about 30 tons.

“We found convincing evidence that the whale was hit by a large ship,” said Joe Gaydos of the Marine Ecosystem Health Program and a member of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. “It looks like it was a pretty darn good blow too.”

The dead whale was first sighted adrift Monday in President Channel off the west side of Orcas Island. From aerial photos, it was initially identified as a minke whale. On Tuesday, it was recovered about 10 miles west at Turn Point. Nick Nash of Friday Harbor, a commercial fisherman, towed the whale to beach by the labs with assistance of Kari Koski of The Whale Museum.

It is the fourth fin whale in the Pacific Northwest that has died this year after being struck by a ship, said Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research. Three were discovered in Puget Sound and one was discovered on the bow of a ship in the Columbia River.

Balcomb speculates the whales’ food source — plankton and tiny shrimp known as krill — have shifted into shipping lanes with changing ocean conditions. The fin whale was likely in open ocean when it was struck and dragged by currents inside the Strait of Juan de Fuca, he said.

“He was a young healthy animal that got in the way of traffic,” Balcomb said of the juvenile male. “It got T-boned by some ship and its wounds were massive.”

Fin whales are cousins of humpbacks, blues and minke whales. They are among the fastest of the great whales and capable of bursts of speed up to 23 mph, which led to its nickname as the “greyhound of the sea.”

Fins are found in all oceans of the world. Adults generally weigh between 50-70 tons, females are slightly larger than males, which measure up to 78 feet in the Northern hemisphere and about 10 feet longer in the Southern hemisphere.

Gaydos said marine biologists will study tissue samples taken during the necropsy to learn more about what chemicals, parasites, pollution or diseases may affect marine mammals in the region and the open ocean. Even if the fin whale has a clean bill of health, its tissues can provide baseline data used for comparison with other whales. Gaydos said a “data gap” exists in science about the health of whales, which was evident when the Southern Resident orcas were proposed to be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

“The tissue samples may help us get a better understanding about what diseases are out there and which might be communicable to the Southern resident,” he said. “When the listing came up, there wasn’t a lot known about what diseases might be affecting them and this could play a part in helping close that gap by providing some baseline information.”

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