Juvenile Humpback Whale strands and dies in West Seattle

A juvenile humpback whale that was seen in the waters off West Seattle on Saturday Aug. 6 stranded in early morning hours of Aug. 7 within feet of the South side of the Fauntleroy Ferry Dock, and died.

The whale, estimated by local whale observer Mark Sears as "around a year and a half old" was "very emaciated" but Sears said that the normal diet for humpbacks, schools of fish like herring, is plentiful in Puget Sound. He said, "I'm not the expert in these things but I'd guess it was sick. Sears was the manager of Colman Pool on Point Williams for more than three decades and has been working with a variety of agencies over time to keep an eye on the habits of marine mammals and whales in the area. "It was out here last night and we saw it and photographed it and it was doing fine."

On site measuring and examining the whale were members of the Marine Mammals Stranding Network including the Cascadia Research Network, Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Marine Mammals Investigations Unit, Seal Sitters. and others.

No sense of when the whale might be removed was yet determined but Sears said one of the top whale researchers in the world John Calambokidas of the Cascadia Research Collective was on hand and was talking with the Washington State Ferries to make a determination of how to handle the carcass.

Sears said, "Right now it's not going to float. The Arroyo Gray Whale (which washed up in West Seattle on April 14, 2010,) took 40 hours to float. So what has to happen is the body heat starts deteriorating the guts and finally the gasses build up. They will get it out of here. They won't let it sit here and decompose. The Arroyo whale first went to McNiel island to decompose and its skeleton went to the MAST research center in Redondo where it is now on display.

Humpbacks in the Pacific have two populations that migrate annually from either Mexico or Hawaii to Alaska.
They are not hunted commercially.

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