By Leanne Delong
FOR THE SOU’WESTER
Transcontinental Media
A North Atlantic right whale was found dead on a beach two kilometers west of Sandy Cove, Digby County, N.S. on Aug. 13.
Fisheries and Oceans met with a local fishing vessel, which hauled the whale to Gulliver’s Cove.
A group from Holland College on Prince Edward Island, including a wildlife pathologist, and a second group from a whale institute on Campobello Island performed a necropsy on Aug. 15, said DFO fisheries officer Philip Bouma.
The researchers started the necropsy at 9 a.m. and stopped 7:30 p.m. that night and then wrapped up by 4 p.m. the next day.
New England Aquarium senior scientist Moira Brown was among those from Campobello Island, and said the whale was about 45 feet long and male.
“There were fractures in the skull and in the rostrum, the upper part of the head and also in the ear bones,” Brown said.
Samples were taken back to Holland College to determine if the fractures occurred before or after the whale died.
“We will try to see if we can match this whale to an individual in our catalogue and we’ll take skin samples to see if we can match the whale with its DNA. If we’ve already sampled it we are probably able to match it,” Brown added.
“It was quite interesting to see,” said onlooker Wanda VanTassell. “They were really good, they’d answer questions people had.”
The DFO’s Bouma said this was the third right whale to be found dead in three weeks along the Atlantic seaboard.
The numbers of right whales are up from 10 years ago, but there are only 450 of them now, he said.
