October 17, 2002

Big mystery: Researchers investigate whale's death

By David Joyner, Gloucester Daily Times staff

Whales occasionally mix with the boaters and tourists who descend upon Gloucester Harbor every year, visiting for a few hours or a few days. But for one young minke this week, it was the last port of call. The juvenile minke whale was found dead Tuesday afternoon, floating between Eastern Point and Ten Pound Island.

Eastern Point Yacht Club staff who discovered the whale and representatives from the Whale Center of New England in Gloucester towed the 16- to 17-foot carcass to Niles Beach. A necropsy was scheduled for today to determine how and why the whale died.

Mason Weinrich, the Whale Center's executive director and chief scientist, said the minke was found tangled in lobster trap gear. "The animal was likely to have died from entanglement," he said yesterday, "but we're not going to know for sure until we complete the necropsy tomorrow morning." Weinrich said the whale's age was "certainly less than five years, probably less than three." He estimated it weighed between 4,000 and 6,000 pounds. Minke whales are believed to live about 30 years and can reach about 14,000 pounds.

Though Gloucester bills itself as a whale watch capital, sightings of the animals in the harbor, living or dead, are infrequent. "Not that often," said Harbormaster James Caulkett. A notable exception came in late 2000 and early 2001, when a juvenile humpback spent several months visiting North Shore harbors, including Gloucester's. Whale Center staff named the animal "Inland," given its preference for inshore areas and its distinctive markings, which looked like the letters "I" and "L." Inland was later found dead, in April 2001, tangled in a fishing net off the Virginia coast.

Whale visits to Cape Ann are not always happy occasions. The animals are sometimes found stranded or dead. "We've had several minke whales in the past few years, usually on the eastern shore, on the Back Shore," said Weinrich, adding that humpbacks and fin whales have also been discovered here. And at Niles Beach in East Gloucester yesterday, the dead minke was the center of a somber scene.

The whale was about halfway up the beach at low tide. A rope wrapped around the minke whale's tail stock stretched up the beach and was attached to a small anchor wedged behind a rock -- to keep the carcass from washing away. Cars slowed on nearby Eastern Point Road, and the occasional passerby shrugged off gusty winds and driving rains to get a closer look. Some took photographs. "It's a shame," said a bus driver who pulled to the roadside. "Poor thing," said a man who stopped his pickup truck in the beach's parking lot.

Joe Boreland, the Eastern Point Yacht Club's waterfront manager, said he discovered the whale about 2 p.m. Tuesday with Jeremy Spittle, the club's launch operator. The two had gone to refuel one of the club's launches, a boat used to ferry people from shore to their moorings. Boreland said they did not notice the whale on their way into the city. "I don't know if we just kind of went on a different path," he said. "It was just above the surface of the water. Unless you came within 100 feet of it, you didn't see it." And on their return trip, he said, it "really didn't look like more than a log." But Boreland, who spent about eight years working for local whale watch companies, said he recognized the carcass as that of a minke whale as they came closer. "I've seem a million of them," he said.

The reason, according to Weinrich, is that minke whales are "maybe the most abundant large whale in the world." They also are the only baleen whale -- or those that eat by filtering fish and organisms from water pushed through their gums -- that is not endangered. Like others of the baleen variety, minke whales are loners. Those that eat with their teeth, such as pilot whales that beached en masse on Cape Cod this summer, tend to travel together. "Tooth whales tend to be group livers. Baleen whales tend to be more solitary," Weinrich said. "And that's how you see strandings."

Weinrich said today's necropsy will be performed at Niles Beach by representatives of the Whale Center and New England Aquarium, as well as a state wildlife official. The procedure may begin to resolve some of the mystery surrounding the whale's death. Despite the fact it was tangled in lobstering gear, for example, that was not necessarily what caused its death. Also uncertain was if the whale became tangled in the area between Ten Pound Island and Eastern Point, which is popular among lobstermen, or if it was entangled elsewhere.

Weinrich noted the National Marine Fisheries Service is helping piece together the puzzle by tracking the owner of the gear found with the whale, to determine where it was being used. Another question was why the whale, which likely died a few days before it was discovered, was found floating near the surface.

Minke carcasses, according to Weinrich, typically sink. "I'm not sure what happened that would have freed the animal up and allowed it to float to the surface," he said. Weinrich contacted the city's Department of Public Works to discuss how to dispose of the whale after the necropsy. Its skeleton, he added, will likely be saved. "It will go to some scientific collection or public display," he said, "either for exhibit or scientific study."

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