dead whale
Yet another humpback whale has been discovered washed up along the Carolinas coast, with a video posted on Facebook showing it tumbling in the surf at Corolla, North Carolina.

It's the fourth humpback whale to wash ashore along the Carolinas in eight weeks, and the fifth dead whale overall. The fifth was a Blainsville Beaked whale that came ashore near Georgetown, South Carolina, in February, reported the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network.


The latest whale corpse washed ashore Sunday at Whalehead Beach in Corolla, reported WDBJ. A 26-second video of it first appeared Sunday afternoon on the BeachPosts Facebook page and was shared by the International Dolphin & Whale Stranding Network.

The humpback was 27.5 foot female whale, and experts "performed a necropsy" on the corpse Monday, reported WTKR.

Experts have not yet reported what has been killing the humpbacks.

However, the latest whale exhibited injuries that hinted it had "become entangled in netting," WTKR reported.

Karen Clark of the Outer Banks Mammal Marine Stranding Network told WAVY the whale was about two years old and "may have died from some sort of entanglement."

Commenters on Facebook speculated plastic trash collected in its stomach may have also contributed, a reference to a growing issue in the world's oceans.

Earlier this week, a 15-foot-whale washed ashore on a Philippine island and was found to have 88 pounds of trash lodged in its stomach, including plastic garbage bags and produce sacks, reported the Washington Post.

That whale had vomited blood before dying, the newspaper reported.