Fourth dead whale washes ashore in Virginia
The carcass of what appears to be a heavily decomposed humpback whale washed ashore during the weekend at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, officials said.
It is the fourth humpback whale to wash ashore in Virginia in the past month.
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A team from the Virginia Aquarium arrived on scene on Tuesday to perform a superficial examination of the whale. The remains were severely scavenged, and several small fractures in the discs of its vertebral column were identified, but that typically happens when a carcass is thrown around in the surf, said Alexander Costidis, stranding coordinator for the Virginia Aquarium's Stranding Response Team.
Much of the whale had been buried in sand along the shoreline, but the exposed areas of the carcass did not indicate an impact with a vessel. The majority of the superficial skin, the coloration of which is used to match a whale in a database, had peeled away from the blubber, according to Costidis.
However, there was one patch intact with a fairly distinctive pattern that could potentially be used to match the whale with the aquarium's identification catalog.
Costidis estimates the length of the whale to be anywhere from 30 to 36 feet.
“While we cannot say definitively that there are more whales in the area compared to past years, that seems to be the consensus, and their numbers in much of the Northwestern Atlantic are believed to be recovering," said Costidis.
"Unfortunately, preliminary data suggest that at least some of the local whales are spending considerable time in the bay's shipping channels, which see considerable vessel traffic."