Endangered Sei Whale Ends Up in Baltimore

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Marine biologists were conducting a necropsy Tuesday on a 35-foot, 17,000-pound sei whale that apparently became attached to a container ship and was dragged into Baltimore's harbor.

BALTIMORE — Marine biologists were conducting a necropsy Tuesday on a 35-foot, 17,000-pound sei whale that apparently became attached to a container ship and was dragged into Baltimore's harbor, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources said.


The sei is an endangered whale that is not frequently seen in U.S. waters.


Tricia Kimmel, a natural resources biologist with DNR, said scientists were trying to determine how the whale become lodged on the ship and whether it was alive or dead at the time it became attached.


"We'll collect measurement data, so we'll try to learn as much as we can about this particular species by studying animals like this one," Kimmel told WBAL-TV.


The male whale was found Monday, wrapped around the bow of the 800-foot container ship that was making its way through the Chesapeake Bay to the Seagirt Marine Terminal.


After the ship got to the terminal, the whale was loaded on a flatbed truck with a crane and taken to the Curtis Bay landfill for a necropsy.


Sei whales are found in the North Atlantic Ocean, ranging from Iceland south to the northeastern Venezuelan coast, and northwest to the Gulf of Mexico.


Source: Associated Press


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