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Rare whale found dead in Lummi Bay Scientists to examine giant mammal for cause of death  | | CHRIS JOSEPH TAYLOR THE BELLINGHAM HERALD | Jeff Reynolds, 35, of Bellingham allows his daughter, Enes Reynolds, 7, to skip school Monday to check out the dead fin whale that washed up on the Lummi Bay mud flats. "It is such a rare thing to see around here," Jeff Reynolds said. "It would be better to have seen it alive, but to see the size of it up close is a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
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FIONA COHEN
THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
| FIN WHALE FACTS | Scientific name: Balaenoptera physalus
Distinction: After the blue whale, the fin whale is the second largest animal in existence.
Maximum size: 88 feet long and 50 tons.
Eats by: Straining water through its baleen to catch small marine crustaceans and fish such as herring and pollock.
Status: Endangered.
Range: World's oceans. | Dozens of curious people sloshed across Lummi Bay's tide flats on Monday to have a close look at an animal no one expected to see. It was a dead fin whale, an endangered species, second-largest animal on earth and a creature of the open ocean. And there it was, about 60 feet long, with an eye the size of a grapefruit, lying belly up on the mud and oozing blood into a line of red puddles.  | | Royrey Jefferson and his sons, Evan Jefferson, 4, left, and Val Jefferson, 3, all of the Lummi reservation, examine the fin whale that washed up on the Lummi Bay mud flats early Monday morning. “I feel bad for the whale because it has died,” Val said. CHRIS JOSEPH TAYLOR THE BELLINGHAM HERALD | "We're not sure how it got in there," said Merle Jefferson, natural resources director for the Lummi Indian Business Council. Around 10:30 a.m. Sunday someone called the National Marine Fisheries Service to report the whale floating in Hale Passage, said Randy Kinley, who works on fisheries policy for the Lummi Natural Resources Department. The whale settled in Lummi Bay later on Sunday. By noon Monday, it didn't have an odor of decay. Jefferson said it hadn't been dead long. "One of our theories is it may have got hit by a boat and drug in by a boat maybe," he said. One piece of evidence supports this idea: marks by the dorsal fin, which look like they could have come from a ship's bow, Kinley said. Lummi Natural Resources staff planned to tow the whale away Monday evening. Today a team of National Marine Fisheries Service biologists and other whale experts will examine it to find the cause of death, and to learn more about the rare species. In the meantime, curious people looked at the dead giant of the seas. "That's sad," said Sharon Johnson. Johnson and friend Jill Monteau drove out to Lummi Bay on their lunch hour, to walk on the dike and peek at the whale from a distance. Beverly Larsen, whose house fronts Lummi Bay, woke up Monday morning to see it floating in the bay. She was amazed at the whale's size. "There was a kayak out there this morning. It's four times as long as the kayak." |
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