DIVING NEWS
Whale calf led divers to mother
Picture: Coast Guard / Antonino Maresco / AMP / Punta Campanella.
A dead fin whale washed up off the southern Italian coast near Sorrento is thought to be one of the biggest whale carcasses ever found in the Mediterranean Sea.
Fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) are second in size only to close relatives the blue whales, the world’s largest animal. The specimen found was 20m long and estimated to weigh around 70 tonnes, although they can grow bigger.
An Italian Coast Guard dive-team were alerted after a fin whale calf swam into Sorrento harbour on the night of 17 January, and reportedly rammed its head into the walls several times before returning to the open sea. The divers followed it and discovered the submerged carcass, presumed to be the calf’s mother. Female fin whales grow larger than males.
The Coast Guard used two motorboats to carry out what it described as a “complex removal and transport operation” to tow the whale into the port of Naples. It said that the task was “made especially difficult” by the combination of the size of the carcass and worsening sea conditions through the night.
The following afternoon Coast Guard scuba divers and marine biologists from its Mobile Environmental Laboratory carried out an autopsy to determine the cause of death, which has yet to be announced.
The Coast Guard said it was keeping watch for the calf to monitor its condition – and there were plans to display the adult’s skeleton in a museum.
27 January 2021
The only known natural predators of fin whales are orcas, which can threaten calves but not adults because of their size. Since commercial whaling stopped, ship-strikes have been the major threat to the species, says the International Whaling Commission.
According to one study ship-strikes were responsible for a third of all fin whale strandings, and posed a particularly high risk for the Mediterranean sub-population, along with high levels of underwater noise and entanglement in fishing-gear.
The effects of climate change and microplastics present further threats to fin whales, which are classed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
