Dead Whale Washes Up in OCMD

[Nimrod]

Washed up whale likely struck by ship
March 16, 2010 - 11:30am


A whale is removed by Ocean City Officials Saturday at the Ocean City Inlet after washing ashore. (Photo courtesy of Salisbury Times/Eric Doerzbach) OCEAN CITY, Md. - The whale that washed up on Ocean City's beach over the weekend was likely struck by a ship.
"We found a number of fractures in the skull and associated hemorrhage and edema, so very likely a ship strike," Cindy Driscoll, veterinarian for Maryland Department of Natural Resources, tells WTOP.

The 11-ton, 31-foot-long humpback whale carcass washed up at Fifth Street Saturday afternoon. Riptides pulled it into the current and it came ashore at Third Street.

To get the female, endangered whale off the beach, Public Works employee Dick Malone made a lasso from 75 feet of chain and looped it around the whale's tail. With the help of a bulldozer and tractor, workers hauled the carcass down the beach under the Ocean City Pier.

The whale was then loaded onto a trailer and hauled, with police escort, to the Public Works complex on 65th Street.

Driscoll says the whale had been dead "three or so days."

While some people remember whales washing ashore in Ocean City in the early 1990s, Driscoll says, "We don't get many whales that wash ashore dead."

Researchers conducted a necropsy and took tissue a number of samples from the whale before it was buried.

"We'd like to rule out that the whale was suffering from any type of problem before it was hit," Driscoll says.

[Big Fish Billy]

Nothing smells worse, let me tell you....

[Henrique38]

Nothing smells worse, let me tell you....

Boy that's the truth. I came across a dead pilot whale about 20 miles offshore a few years ago. I got down wind of it and man was that a mistake.