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The humpback whale was spotted floating in Sitka Sound Sept. 13.
A team from the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the University of Alaska Southeast arrived last weekend to check out the carcass, which was beached.
© Joe SerioResearchers collect samples from a beached humpback whale carcass Saturday on a Sitka Sound beach
"It had indications of hemorrhage where it had been struck and possibly carried by a ship. So there are areas of trauma that look convincing that it had had a major blunt impact," she said.
She says it was likely a large vessel, such as a tanker, cruise ship or ferry. But she's not positive.
"We can't quite say it definitively at this point. First of all, we've only had a limited amount of time to access the animal because of the tides. Also, because there'd been a lot of changes because the animal had rotted for a while," she said.
The team cut into the whale, removing blubber and other tissue for further study.
Burek says they climbed into the carcass for the difficult task of finding and removing its ear plugs.
"These plugs are formed by yearly laying down of ear wax. And since a whale doesn't have a big opening out from the ear, it just tends to accumulate. If you can get that, there are ways to count those rings and be able to be more definitive about how old the animal was," she said.
This whale's age is not yet available. Burek said it takes a month to analyze the plugs.
Other samples will be used to determine whether the whale had been exposed to toxic algae blooms.
Source: Coast Alaska News
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