(Daytona Beach News-Journal)
Whale rescued from rope found dead
BY DINAH VOYLES PULVER, ENVIRONMENT WRITER
February 4, 2011 12:05 AM Posted in: Environment - Flagler Tagged: whales
Clay George of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Dr. William McLellan of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, examine a right whale that rescuers thought they had saved weeks ago. (Photo | NOAA)
Clay George of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources examines a right whale scientists sedated at sea and disentangled from fishing gear. It later died and was brought to shore. (Photo | NOAA)
CRESCENT BEACH -- An endangered North Atlantic right whale that survived being tangled in a rope for weeks and a rare sedation at sea was found dead in the Atlantic Ocean east of Flagler County this week.
On Thursday, dozens of scientists and students from institutions along the Eastern seaboard gathered to examine the 31-foot whale's body to try to learn more about why it died and what, if any, effect the groundbreaking sedation had on the animal.
They preliminarily concluded a combination of two things likely killed the whale, a shark attack and the lingering injuries and aftereffects of having a section of rope wrapped through its mouth, according to the team organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The team found numerous shark bites on the animal, including bites just above the tail that severed several large veins, said Bill McLellan, a research biologist at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The evidence at the bite wounds indicates the whale was alive when it was attacked, McLellan said.
It's likely the animal, already suffering from its rope injuries, may have been floating at or near the surface, where sharks are known to attack, scientists said.
A crew of experts had intervened twice to try to remove the rope around the whale's head and flippers, first cutting away 150 feet of rope on Dec. 30. On Jan. 15, biologists accomplished their second-ever sedation of a right whale, administering precise medication that allowed it to continue swimming but calmed it enough to allow a crew in a boat to get close enough to remove more of the rope.
However, the examination Thursday revealed the crew had been unable to see a piece of rope that remained embedded in the animal's lip and wrapped through the baleen plates in its mouth, said Barb Zoodsma, right-whale recovery program coordinator for the Southeast region of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service.
Tracking the whale after the sedation via a satellite tag, the crew said the animal swam as far south as Miami and was last seen swimming a week ago.
But the rope around the baleen plates left several gaps that might have prevented the animal from getting any food and eroded a deep groove in one set of the plates, the scientists said. It also embedded so deeply into the lip that tissue had grown around it.
McLellan was chosen to lead the necropsy in part because he was not involved in the Jan. 15 sedation so he could independently determine whether the medical procedure played any role in the death.
He concluded the places where the whale had been darted and subsequently tagged were not inflamed or infected.
That was good news for scientists on the sedation team, who wanted to know how the animal responded to the treatment.
"If the things we're doing aren't helpful or beneficial we want to know," Zoodsma said.
The whale "showed us that what we were doing worked," said Mike Walsh, a veterinarian and associate professor at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine. They'll take what they learned from their work on Thursday, combined with what they learned during the sedation and "fine-tune it and make it better," Walsh said.
The female whale was born two years ago in this region, an area where pregnant female right whales migrate each winter from the Bay of Fundy to give birth.
Biologists said Thursday the young whale made a huge contribution to science. "Many, many samples" were taken and will be sent to a number of universities and research laboratories.
And, a team from the Georgia Aquarium's Dolphin Conservation Center at Marineland salvaged the skeleton and plans to reconstruct it later to be used for educational purposes.
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