A huge endangered dead whale washes ashore in Mandarmoni coast

A huge endangered dead whale washes ashore in Mandarmoni coast 

 An official of Digha Marine Aquarium said the huge whale apparently seemed to be Sei whale species. The administration has been informed and they will decide whether it will be preserved or buried in the sea beach.

Biswabrata Goswami

MIDNAPORE, 29 JUNE: A 36-feet-long critically endangered whale has been found dead at Mandamoni sea beach near Digha in East Midnapore today.

The huge whale washed up on shore with several injury marks found on its body, but the cause of injuries have not been ascertained yet.

The local police and forest department officials rushed to the spot soon after the news spread and they are currently working on it to reveal the cause of death.

According to a forest official, this whale was about 36-feet-long which falls in the category of the endangered schedule-I species under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 in India.

Local residents said that they were overwhelmed after looking the huge whale lying on the beach in a pool of blood. “I never had seen such a huge whale. I thought it was a shark, but when I went to close to it, I found it was a dead whale”, said Amiya Jana, a local resident.

An official of Digha Marine Aquarium said the huge whale apparently seemed to be Sei whale species. The administration has been informed and they will decide whether it will be preserved or buried in the sea beach.

The sei whale is a baleen whale, the third-largest rorqual after the blue whale and the fin whale. It inhabits most oceans and adjoining seas, and prefers deep offshore waters. It avoids polar and tropical waters and semienclosed bodies of water. The sei whale migrates annually from cool, subpolar waters in summer to temperate, subtropical waters in winter with a lifespan of 70 years.

Normally, lenghth of this sei whale on an average is about 52-feet and experts are not sure how this came here.

This is not an isolated episode as several similar incidents have occurred in the recent past.

Earlier, on 10 December, 2012, a 45-feet-long whale weighing about 18 ton was found dead inside the deep sea about 40 nautical miles far from Digha coast. 

That whale was later dragged to the shore and it has been preserved in the Digha Marine Acquarium. It was opened for people in 2017.

This apart, on 7 June, the carcass of an 18-feet-long, one-toed sperm whale washed ashore on Atrankarai near Alakankulam in Ramanathapuram district. On 23 May, a 40-feet-long whale had washed up on the shore in the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary area in Odisha’s Kendrapara district. It too had had injury marks on the body.