Giant whales found piled up dead on west coast beach — Second largest animals on planet — Official: “It’s never happened… Extremely unusual… Very rare and odd… We want to know why” — Gov’t scientists testing for Fukushima radiation — Backlog at lab due to so many recent deaths (PHOTOS)
ENENews.com
November 20th, 2015
CKNW News Talk 980, Nov 18, 2015 (emphasis added): The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is looking into the death of three fin whales near Bella Bella on BC’s central coast… Paul Cottrel with the DFO says a multiple death like this is extremely unusual. “We just get one or two a year, and usually never in the same area like this, or on the same beach which is even more rare. So that’s why it’s definitely a very unique situation.” He says all three whales were juvenile males, two of them likely younger than two-years-old… He says there were no bite marks on the carcasses, or any signs of boat strike either. Cottrel says the DFO conducted a necropsy, but found no obvious cause of death.
Global News, Nov 19, 2015: Questions raised after carcasses of 3 dead fin whales found near Bella Bella… “It is very rare and odd that you get three large whales together in one small area,” says Cottrell. “We want to know why it happened, whether it is a natural event, killer whale predation or something else.” Cottrell says, to his knowledge, it has never happened in B.C. before, which is a source for concern. The fin whales are listed as threatened under the Species At Risk Act… and are the second-largest animal on the planet after blue whales. “Any time you get three animals that wash up and die together and it is a threatened species, we are going to work hard to figure out what happened,” he says… “Given the location and where they ended up, all close together, we are thinking that the animals likely live stranded and died there together”
The Rest…HERE
