
For the first time on record, a sperm whale carcass was found in Lynn Canal.
This is the third time since 1990 that researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) could necropsy a sperm whale in Alaska. But before the necropsy was complete, someone stole the sperm whale’s lower jaw, a violation of the federal law.
A private pilot spotted the carcass on the east bank of Lynn Canal near Eldred Rock on Tuesday, March 19. A team of eight, including veterinarians, marine biologists and graduate students, began to assess the carcass on Wednesday, March 20. They left their work unfinished due to weather conditions. When they returned more than a week later, on March 29, someone had removed the sperm whale’s lower jaw.
The team notified NOAA’s office of law enforcement and will post a web story asking the public for help getting the jaw bone back. There are no plans to remove the whale.
“We leave the whale as is and let nature take its course,” said Julie Speegle, a biologist at NOAA.
“It is not at all typical for sperm whales to be in Lynn Canal,” said Kate Savage, lead veterinarian on necropsy, as well as a biologist at NOAA. “We knew they were around, but not in Lynn Canal,” she said.
Though her team had done countless whale necropsies, Savage said that none of them had done one on a sperm whale, and “It was pretty exciting that we were able to access this carcass.”
The team initially suspected that plastic waste killed the whale. Lauren Wild, a PhD candidate in fisheries at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, explained that sperm whales eat larger prey, like black cod and squid, and they are more vulnerable to plastic, because “plastic bags or pieces of net may ‘look’ like squid to them.” Sperm whales “see” with echolocator clicks.
“We found no plastic in the stomach, just squid beaks,” Wild said. “It was a surprising find because it seems like every whale that gets opened in the world these days has a lot of plastic in the stomach, so it was a pleasant surprise.”
Wild’s research focuses on the diet and movement of sperm whales in the Gulf of Alaska, and said the deep-diving whales are likely attracted to Lynn Canal‘s deep waters. The whales have been seen since 2008 in the Chatham Strait, a deep, canyon-like fjord home to black cod. “Fish and Game had hypothesized that sperm whales followed them in. What we believe has happened is sperm whales remove fish from long-line gear,” she said.
Wild is part of the Southeast Alaska Sperm Whale Avoidance Project, (SEASWAP), which tracks 122 sperm whales. Of those, SEASWAP has noticed three whales in lower Lynn Canal. At 2,000 feet deep, Lynn Canal is the deepest fjord in North America, abundant with fish and squid. But the sperm whale they found was not one of the three tagged.
This one was a young adult male, said Wild. “Male sperm whales are typically around 60 feet long. This animal was about 48 feet. We really don’t know how old it is but we were able to get teeth and ear bone samples to find out,” she said.
Though the various samples they collected have not yet been analyzed, Savage thinks that the whale’s fractured vertebrae and soft tissue damage indicate that it was killed by a propeller strike.
“He got hit by a ship, a rather big ship,” said Savage, “because we found three very deep parallel slices indicating a prop-strike of a larger vessel.”
Anyone with knowledge of the sperm whale’s jawbone is asked to call 907-586-9329.