Dead gray whale found near PSNS, Washington
By Chris Henry
January 20, 2013
BREMERTON —A gray whale has turned up dead near Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
It was first spotted Saturday night near the USS Ronald Reagan, then it couldn’t be found Sunday morning — raising hope it might have swam away — but its body was later found nearby.
Steve Jeffries, a marine mammal specialist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, determined from a preliminary examination that it was a juvenile female gray whale about 28 to 30 feet long.
The whale had old scars likely from an attack by an orca, Jeffries said, but there was no sign of recent trauma. The whale was emaciated and appears to have died of starvation, he said.
The whale was discovered at about 9 p.m. Saturday, according to Naval Base Kitsap spokesman Tom Danaher. Navy officials contacted the Fish and Wildlife on Saturday night to remove it. But Sunday morning, duty officers in the shipyard and aboard the Reagan saw no sign of it, said Mary Anne Mascianica, spokeswoman for PSNS.
Jeffries believes the whale is the same one seen Tuesday in Tacoma’s Foss Waterway. The scar patterns on the whale’s back appear similar, he said.
Early Sunday, Howard Garrett of the nonprofit Orca Network of Whidbey Island also voiced his opinion that the PSNS whale and the Foss whale were the same. The behavior in both cases of a whale swimming near boats was unusual and probably signaled distress, he said.
“It’s going into some strange places that usually indicates it doesn’t have long,” Garrett said. “I would say these are all signs of a very stressed gray whale.”
A full necropsy is not planned. Jeffries will complete his examination of the whale, and it will be towed out into Puget Sound and sunk in deep water.
“This is not that unusual for an emaciated gray whale to come into Puget Sound to die,” Jeffries said. “We’ve seen it in the past.”
Danaher said the Navy is standing by to assist as needed.
Whale sightings can be reported to Orca Network at 866-672-2638 or Fish and Wildlife at 253-589-7235.
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Whistler Blowers, Insiders
Gray whale dead at Bremerton had old orca wounds, Washington
February 01, 2013
Severe scars on a gray whale found dead at Bremerton indicate a killer whale attack years ago left it too weak to complete this year’s migration from Alaska to Mexico, a biologist said.
Looking for food in Puget Sound, the whale was able to find only woody debris in the sediments, said John Calambokidis of Cascadia Research, who pulled handfuls of sticks and bark out of its stomach during the necropsy.
The 29-foot immature male looked emaciated, its layer of blubber thin. MORE …
http://www.theolympian.com/2013/02/01/2407007/gray-whale-dead-at-bremerton-had.html