Early Sunday (Oct. 7), a
50-foot fin whale was spotted belly-up in Boston Harbor. Biologists are still
investigating the cause of death, but some scientists on the scene said they
saw a lot of bruising and pressure lines on the whale's body, according
to WCBV-TV.
Such markings could indicate
the whale got tangled or wrapped in something, which might not come as a
surprise. A report out this month found that humans might be to blame for most
large whale deaths over the past 40 years in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, with
entanglement in fishing gear the No. 1 killer.
The study looked at 1,762
known deaths and likely fatal injuries from 1970 to 2009 among eight species of
big whales in the region, including the endangered fin whales, which reach up
to 90 feet (27 meters) in length, making them the second-largest living mammals
after blue
whales. A cause of death had been determined in 750 of the cases (around 42
percent), and of those, nearly 67 percent of the fatalities were human related.
Posts
