Beached whale that died in coastal NYC was malnourished
Source: Star Tribune
NEW YORK - Tests show a 60-foot beached whale that died in a costal enclave of New York City was malnourished but wasn't injured or killed by humans.
The whale is part of an endangered species known as finback or fin whales. It was severely emaciated but clinging to life when it was discovered Wednesday stranded at Breezy Point, a Queens community hit hard by Superstorm Sandy.
Volunteer firefighters sprayed water on the whale as it sat halfway out of the Jamaica Bay water. The whale drifted out of sight at high tide and came ashore dead Thursday.
Marine officials said Friday the whale was malnourished and had lesions in its stomach and kidneys. The cause of its death won't be determined until testing comes back on tissue samples.
Read more: http://www.startribune.com/nation/185108141.html?refer=y
This is incredibly sad. Was the whale affected by Corexit? Was it malnourished because of overfishing by trawlers?
Cher
Scuba
(53,475 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)If it was malnourished it can only be caused by overfishing.
cstanleytech
(26,026 posts)animals have been starving to death long before mankind even existed and they will do so for a long time after mankind is gone.
Is it possible though that is the this specific whaled was malnourished? Yes, its possible.
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)csziggy
(34,115 posts)Since many whales eat krill, something that humans seldom fish for, at least in the North Atlantic.
Well, I was wrong - finback whales eat small fish as well as krill:
http://www.whalingtimes.com/Fin%20Whale%20Page.htm
Krill are fished extensively by ships in the Antartic. NOAA passed a ban on krill fishing in some parts of US waters in 2009, but there are probably ships that ignore those bans or fish just outside our territorial waters. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/krill/ and http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/07/noaa-says-no-krill and http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100901/full/467015a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krill#Harvest
There is also the concern that climate change is affecting the krill:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/07/noaa-says-no-krill and http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100901/full/467015a.html
But the fin whale found in New York is not likely to have fed in Antartic waters:
In the Northern Hemisphere there are similar north-south migrations, and many whales appear to return to the same feeding grounds every year, but the pattern is not so clear, perhaps because of the influence of the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. Populations of northern and southern hemispheres never meet.
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/cetaceans/about/fin_whale/
I have not found information on krill populations in the Artic, but given the information above, that krill feed on algae living under the ice, and given that Artic ice is less than in previous years, logically there would be less krill in Northern oceans for whales and other ocean life to eat. If so, low numbers of krill could collapse the ecosystem of the Northern Atlantic.
PaulaFarrell
(1,236 posts)Other options would be some kind of obstruction preventing it from eating properly, or it could have some disease or injury with the same result. There are all sorts of things that can cause malnoursihment and lack of access to food is just one of them. In any case, lack of food supply more likely to be due to ocean acidification killing off krill than overfishing in this instance.
Trillo
(9,154 posts)First paragraph states, with no uncertainty, it was not killed by humans. Last excerpt of the OP states cause of death is unknown.
Cal33
(7,018 posts)humans are not the cause of the whale's death, but he does not know what the cause of its
death is. Of the many possible causes of the whale's death, he knows that just one of them
is not.