Whales found dead under Australian Navy ship in San Diego
May 11, 2021
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SAN DIEGO (AP) Two dead fin whales were dislodged from the hull of a Royal Australian Navy ship that has been conducting exercises in Southern California, authorities said.
The destroyer HMAS Sydney was pulling into a pier at Naval Base San Diego on Saturday morning when the carcasses of the two whales dislodged from the hull under the surface, the Australian Department of Defence told KSWB-TV.
One whale was 65 feet (19.81 meters) long and the other was about 25 feet (7.62 meters) long, KGTV-TV reported.
The Sydney has been holding joint exercises with the U.S. Navy in the area since early April.
Whales found dead under Australian Navy ship at Naval Base San Diego The Associated Press May 12 The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John Finn (DDG 113), left, transits the Pacific with the Royal Australian Navy Hobart-class destroyer HMAS Sydney (DDG 42) April 1, 2021. (MC3 Jason Waite/Navy) SAN DIEGO Two dead fin whales were dislodged from the hull of a Royal Australian Navy ship that has been conducting exercises in Southern California, authorities said. The destroyer HMAS Sydney was pulling into a pier at Naval Base San Diego on Saturday morning when the carcasses of the two whales dislodged from the hull under the surface, the Australian Department of Defence told KSWB-TV.
In the past month, eight dead whales have washed up on beaches of the San Francisco Bay. Since 2018, 21 have washed up dead on the coast of British Columbia. This week, a rarely seen deep-sea anglerfish was found dead on Newport Beach at California’s Crystal Cove State Park. Are these signs of how much radiation from the Fukushima disaster is still in the Pacific? Is it a warning to the Pacific coast of an upcoming and disastrous earthquake or tsunami? Or is it something … worse?
“Tissue samples were taken from the three whales but scientists couldn’t perform necropsies to determine how the whales died because the carcasses were in locations that were unsafe, inaccessible or had shifting tides, the center said. Four other gray whales have been found dead in the Bay Area since early April, along with one fin whale. A pygmy sperm whale was found in February at a Sonoma County beach.”
Scientists necropsy a fin whale killed by ship strike off central Chile in May 2018. Pablo Espinoza
Following whale deaths, Chilean researchers call for greater protections
May. 11, 2021 , 2:05 PM
SANTIAGO, CHILE It wasn’t hard for researchers to deduce what had killed the blue whale. The huge mammal, found on Chile’s southern Patagonian coast, was young and had no signs of disease. But beneath its ribs were a 1-meter-long hematoma and other wounds that were sure signs of “blunt trauma,” says Frederick Toro Cortes, a medical veterinarian at Santo Tomás University here.
“The only thing that can have that kind of impact on a blue whale the largest animal on the planet is a large ship,” says Mauricio Seguel, a colleague of Toro Cortes who is a veterinary pathologist at the University of Guelph.
Deaths of endangered Caspian seals could be caused by fishing - Russian Natural Resources and Environment Ministry
MOSCOW. May 7 (Interfax) - The endangered seals that washed up dead on the Russian shore of the Caspian Sea could have died because of fishing nets, the Russian Natural Resources and Environment Ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram on Friday. Most likely, the seals got caught in fishing nets. Once that happened, most of the animals were skinned and dumped into the sea, the statement said.
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Alexander Kozlov is personally monitoring the situation, it said. This situation is outrageous. The population of a rare animal has been endangered. Why? Because somebody has been catching sprat on their migration path and tried to cover their tracks with poaching, Kozlov was quoted in the statement as saying.