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Whale Found With 220 Pounds Of Trash In Belly
According to pictures posted to a Facebook page called Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme, a massive sperm whale was found stranded on the shore of Seilebost beach that had over 220 pounds of ocean trash in its stomach.
They Decided To Cut It Open And Perform A Necropsy
The whale was found by a group of people walking past the beach who alerted the authorities in hopes they could save the whale. Once they got down there though they realized it had been dead for over 48 hours.
Trying to figure out what happened to it, they decided to perform a whale necropsy on the spot. According to the post, they stuck a knife in the whale to cut it open and guts exploded out its side leaving a big hole showing “net, bundles of rope, plastic cups, bags, gloves, packing straps and tubing” inside the whale’s belly.
Determining The Whale’s Cause Of Death
Animal experts who arrived at the scene tested the health of the animal and said it was a young male sperm whale that didn’t appear to be unhealthy. Also, even though it had a lot of debris in its stomach, they didn’t find any evidence that the trash prevented its intestines from operating effectively causing the animal to die.
Losing its way and getting stranded on the beach simply could have been the reason. However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that ocean animals are negatively impacted by tons of garbage humans consistently throw into the ocean and this whale could have certainly died because of it.
They Buried The Whale On Site
After dissecting the creature they decided to burry it on sight because the 40,000-pound whale was too heavy to move and too difficult to get to by land, or towing it by boat. So they buried it overnight and said there should be no evidence it was even there by the next morning.