According to NOAA spokesperson Julie Speegle, NOAA is currently making efforts to secure the carcass of a gray whale to the beach where it washed up on Wrangell Island a few days ago, and plan to perform a necropsy later in the week.
The carcass of a gray whale was reported floating between Wrangell and Channel Island, in the eastern passage. According to Kate Savage, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, her organization heard about the whale early Saturday morning, June 15. Wrangell resident Sara Gadd shared several photographs of the animal on Facebook. Gadd's husband, Charles, took the photos. He said that he first found the whale floating in the water around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, and saw it again beached around 9:30 a.m. Monday, June 17. It is located about a mile or two before Earl West, he said.
There is currently an "Unusual Mortality Event" happening around Alaska and the west coast in general, Savage said, leading to a spike in whale deaths. Since Jan. 1 this year, according to an article on the gray whale UME, there have been 155 whale strandings along the length of the Pacific coast from Mexico to Alaska. In the month of May, alone, there were 30 strandings reported along the United States west coastline, as opposed to about five in May of 2018. The month of June is also higher than last year's record of gray whale strandings. Julie Speegle, spokesperson for NOAA, said that this is the eighth dead whale reported in Alaska this year.
"Full or partial necropsy examinations were conducted on a subset of the whales," the NOAA article reads. "Preliminary findings in several of the whales have shown evidence of emaciation. These findings are not consistent across all of the whales examined, so more research is needed."
Savage said that NOAA plans to run a necropsy on the whale to determine the cause of death, and see if more clues about the wider mortality event can be found. She has asked that the public keep their distance from the carcass until the necropsy is completed. They have a limited window of time to complete their work, she said, and the fewer distractions from their work there are, the better. She also added they would be happy to answer any questions from the public once the necropsy is completed. For more information about the UME, visit http://www.fisheries.noaa.gov under "2019 Gray Whale Unusual Mortality Event Along the West Coast."
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