PORTLAND, Maine — The dead humpback whale found wrapped in fishing gear off Cape Elizabeth on Thursday had congested lungs consistent with acute drowning, according to preliminary findings from a necropsy released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The preliminary information did not indicate what type of fishing gear the whale was wrapped in, where it may have come from or if it contributed to the whale’s death.
Other findings indicate the female humpback was approximately 38-feet long, weighed 58,000 pounds, and had a stomach full of fish. Scientists also collected samples from her organs for further testing and examined healed injuries from an earlier 2015 entanglement with fishing gear.
NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement is continuing to investigate this incident. A NOAA spokesperson refused to make anyone at the agency available for an interview.
After it was found last week, the whale, known to scientists as “Chunk,” was towed into Portland Harbor and removed from the water with a boat hoist at Portland Yacht Services. It was then trucked on a low-bed trailer to a farm in Gorham where the necropsy was conducted. The procedure was headed up by Marine Mammals of Maine on Friday.
The whale was then buried.
According to NOAA’s website, complete necropsy results may take weeks or months to finalize. Information documented in the field must later be confirmed by diagnostic laboratories using microscopes, as well as genetic and pathogen testing.
Chunk was spotted about two weeks ago off of Mount Desert Island, according to Lindsey Jones, the photo-ID director for Allied Whale, a marine mammal laboratory based at College of the Atlantic. Jones said that a researcher from Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co. spotted Chunk during a cruise on May 25.
Since 2016, NOAA has been investigating a spike in humpback deaths known as an “unusual mortality event” in the North Atlantic. At least 221 deaths have been reported, including eight in or offshore of Maine, according to NOAA.
The agency is also investigating another mortality event that has left at least 39 North Atlantic right whales dead since 2017, including one that was found in January on Martha’s Vineyard wrapped in Maine fishing gear.
