CAMANO ISLAND — A dead 30-ton gray whale was floating mid-channel in Saratoga Passage just northwest of Camano Island today, a sea mammal education group reported.
Several dozen people spotted the adult whale’s body, half submerged in the waters just off Camano Island State Park, beginning at about 10 a.m. Sunday, said Susan Berta, co-founder of the Whidbey Island-based Orca Network. KIRO 7 TV posted video of the floating carcass.
The group has secured permission from officials at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island to pull the whale onto a restricted, Navy-owned beach on Whidbey Island tonight, she said. There, researchers from several organizations will perform a necropsy to determine cause of death, she said.
“We need to wait until high tide so we can pull the whale as far up on the beach as possible,” she said.
The Orca Network tracks the movements of a small population of about a dozen gray whales that migrate into local waters each year. It’s not clear if the dead whale belongs to that group, she said.
The dead gray whale had what appeared to be wounds on its body consistent with strike marks from orcas, also called killer whales, Berta said. They won’t know the nature of the wounds until the dead whale is pulled up on the beach and examined, she said.
Gray whales typically arrive in this part of the Puget Sound at this time of year and stay for three months, feeding on a bounty of ghost shrimp before they head north to the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. Sometimes, a stray whale who normally wouldn’t frequent local waters will come here when it’s too sick or too old to continue with its northward migration, she said.
“One or two or three gray whales will die and come up to the beach every year,” Berta said.
After the necropsy, researchers will take some of the whale’s bones for educational purposes. The rest of the whale will be left on the beach to decompose and feed area wildlife, she said.
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