Authorities this week got a surprise when a cruise ship that had recently docked into New York Harbor called and reported that they had a dead whale stuck to the front of the ship, The Washington Post reports.
The cruise ship, called the MSC Meraviglia, was returning from the Bermuda when it came to port at New York.
A statement from the cruise line said, “We immediately notified the relevant authorities, who are now conducting an examination of the whale,” per The Guardian. “We are deeply saddened by the loss of any marine life.”
BBC reports that the whale had been identified as a sei whale, an endangered species, and it was found to be 44 feet long. The sei whale can weigh up to 100,000 pounds and are often found in subtropical, sub-polar and temperate ocean regions, according to NOAA Fisheries.
What we know so far about the dead whale
An Facebook statement from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society shared that they were able to conduct a necropsy on the sei whale, which was an adult female.
They found the whale had “tissue trauma along the right shoulder blade region, and a right flipper fracture. The whale’s gastrointestinal tract was also full of food.” Current toxicology tests will let them know if the whale died due to the ship impact or if it died beforehand.
Andrea Gomez from the NOAA shared with NBC News that sei whales are found in deep waters of the ocean far away from coastlines and are a protected species.
A history of ships hitting whales
Approximately 20,000 whales are hit by ships every year, per Vox; this is because there’s an overlap between a whale’s natural feeding ground and maritime shipping lanes, according to Douglas McCauley from the University of California Santa Barbara.
According to the NOAA, whales can’t avoid ships for a variety of reasons and end up getting injured or killed:
- The ocean is noisy to whales, so they will tune out certain repetitive noises such as the drone of a ship.
- Whales sometimes can’t locate where a ship is coming from.
- If a ship is moving faster than a whale’s top speed, the whale won’t have enough time to evade it.
- Sometimes whales make mistakes.
To prevent more ships from hitting whales, two suggestions have been brought up, The Guardian reports. First, current shipping lanes could be reorganized so that they avoid whale habitats and second, change the speed limits ships go at in the ocean. It was found that 61.5% of ships in 2022 followed these suggestions, especially slowing down around whales.