The National Park Service has released the results of an examination conducted on a humpback whale found dead in Glacier Bay National Park.<\/p>\n
According to a report dated June 6, \u201cthere were indications that the whale was in poor health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Stephen Raverty, the veterinary pathologist who led the examination, said in the report, \u201cIt appears that the poor nutritional condition of this whale may have predisposed it to physical injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whale, named Festus by a spotter in the 1970s (the whale \u201cfestooned itself with kelp,\u201d according to Charles Jurasz), was Southeast Alaska\u2019s most consistent cetacean resident. The whale\u2019s known 45-year history in the region was the longest of any in the whale catalog. It is not clear if Festus was the oldest whale in the region.<\/p>\n
Whales are occasionally killed in Glacier Bay by cruise ships navigating its narrow fjords, and when Festus was found floating near the mouth of the bay on June 26, there were thoughts that a ship had done the whale in.<\/p>\n
The team of biologists and volunteers that examined the whale found bleeding and bruising in its mouth \u2014 a sign of physical injury \u2014 but there were no skull or bone fractures that are definitive signs of a collision.<\/p>\n
Festus was thin for a humpback, and its lymph nodes were swollen, indicating infection. It was also heavily infested with parasites known as \u201cwhale lice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glacier Bay\u2019s whale biologist, Christine Gabriele, said several whales in Glacier Bay and other parts of Southeast have been thinner than normal this summer, and very few whale calves have been documented.<\/p>\n
In a typical summer, \u201cwe have seen 10 or more calves in Glacier Bay and Icy Strait,\u201d she wrote. This summer, only one calf has been seen.<\/p>\n
A strong El Ni\u00f1o and warm North Pacific Ocean water may be contributing to poor feeding conditions among whales, and those conditions could be affecting whale health.<\/p>\n
An abnormal number of whale deaths has been seen throughout Southcentral Alaska this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Park Service has released the results of an examination conducted on a humpback whale found dead in Glacier Bay National Park. According to a report dated June 6, \u201cthere were indications that the whale was in poor health<\/a>.\u201d Dr. Stephen Raverty, the veterinary pathologist who led the examination, said in the report, \u201cIt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":13942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13941"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}