Following the appearance of a dead whale off the coast of St Ives at the weekend, marine mammal research and rescue teams are trying to discover whether it is that of a young humpback whale that they had been monitoring off Godrevy over the last month. British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) had been monitoring the whale since the end of July when it was first seen close to a marker buoy. The humpback disappeared on 31st July, so they were therefore interested to learn if it was the same animal.
"It seemed to be attracted to the buoy as if it thought it was its mother", says Dave Jarvis, BDMLR co-ordinator for Cornwall. "We went out every few hours in our boat to monitor it and noticed that the wave action on the buoy caused a sound a bit like a whale's 'blow', when it exhales air, and wondered if the baby thought that was another whale. It was nuzzling the buoy like it was trying to feed from it. It was very thin and lethargic and obviously starving. We remained stationery and it kept coming up under our boat as it would under its mother. It was heartbreaking really." The team watched over the six metre long whale for the next two weeks until, one day, if disappeared and was not seen again until a body was seen on Sunday floating off Hayle.
The Cornwall Wildlife Trust Marine Strandings Network (MSN) had been on alert, expecting the bad news, and the team joined BDMLR to watch the movement of the whale's body in St Ives bay over the course of the day, waiting for it to strand on one of the beaches so that they could examine it. Unfortunately, late on Sunday evening, the dead whale became caught up in the winch line for the power cable that had been laid for the wave hub that is being sited off the north coast of Cornwall. BDMLR alerted the deployment vessel, the Nordica, to the problem and they sent out a boat to free the whale from the line and tow it offshore, as it was not safe for them to try to beach it.
BDMLR Operations Manager Stephen Marsh said “Looking at the few photographs that we’ve had of the carcase, it does look like this could be a humpback whale. They have incredibly long pectoral fins that are a third of the length of the body, and the remains of the dorsal fin on its back is a similar shape to the one viewed off the buoy. It’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be the same one, but we need to be a bit cautious.”
"We have never had a humpback whale strand in Cornwall before" said Caroline Curtis, duty Strandings Hotline coordinator, "and were waiting for the whale to strand so that we could take some samples from it for research. At least then we could learn something from this very sad outcome that might help us understand humpback whales better”.
The body of the whale is very decomposed, and if it does strand, the public are strongly advised not to go near it. "It will be extremely putrid by now and very smelly" says Jan Loveridge, Marine Strandings Network co-ordinator, "and could certainly pose a health risk to anyone who touches it. When the fin whale stranded earlier this year on the north coast, we saw members of the public allowing their children to climb on it and some people even took bones away. We should remind everyone that it's illegal to do this without a licence and they could be prosecuted. But more importantly they could become infected from contact with any marine animal carcass as they can carry diseases, so the public should give it a very wide berth."
"Our team is authorised and trained to take samples for our colleagues at the Institute of Zoology, and others researching large whales," continues Jan, "and if DNA can be extracted, it may even be possible to trace which population the whale came from."
Humpback whales follow a vast migration route from their breeding grounds in the tropics to their feeding grounds in the North Atlantic. A single calf is born every two to three years and measures about 4.5 to 5 metres long. Adult males can reach up to 15 metres long and females up to 16 metres, although the average is shorter. They are listed as an endangered species in the Atlantic and only around 8,000 - 10,000 are estimated to be found in the North Atlantic, where they feed on small, schooling fish such as herring and mackerel.
The public are urged to report any live-stranded marine animals they come across to BDMLR on 01825 765546 and any dead stranded animals to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust Marine Strandings Network on their Hotline: 0845 201 2626.
