A dead fin whale that washed ashore in Port Hastings, N.S. last month has found a final resting place.
The 14-metre whale caused an unpleasant odour near the Canso Causeway and required a costly cleanup, but local marine biology students who examined the whale say it’s an experience they won’t soon forget.
“It’s a lot more real when you get to see it,” says Lindsay Devers.
Devers volunteered with the Marine Animal Response Society, a group that studied and helped removed the carcass. She says getting to examine such a large mammal is something students can’t learn in a classroom.
“You can go watch a video and everything like that, but once you go and see it up close, it’s just a whole new level of realism,” she says. “You don’t even really get an idea of how big it is until you actually get to see the whole thing.”
Andrew Reid, response coordinator for the Marine Animal Response Society, says the whale wasn’t fully grown when its carcass washed ashore, but its death wasn’t human related.
“There were no signs of abrasion marks that might have been caused by ropes if it had been entangled in gear, and once we had completely de-fleshed the animal we could see there weren’t any broken bones or sign of traumatic injury,” says Reid.
The whale had been dead for about two weeks before researchers could examine it, so some of the animal’s organs had already decomposed. But researchers have determined the whale was suffering from malnutrition, which means it also could have been suffering from a disease.
A necropsy was performed on the whale after officials with the Department of Natural Resources moved it to Janvrin Island off the east coast of Cape Breton. The whale is now buried on the island.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Amanda Debison
