Ryan ChartrandThree blue whales were found dead last month off the coasts of Southern California, two of which were due to ship strikes, according to reports.
Early last month, a male blue whale was found stranded in Long Beach Harbor. Less than a week later, another stranded blue whale was discovered floating near Hobson County Beach in Ventura County.
The latest whale was also spotted floating off the coast of Ventura County by Derek Lee, a vacationing marine biologist who was sailing to Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard.
“The last time a blue whale was stranded dead in Santa Barbara County was in 1996,” said Easter Moorman, spokesperson for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
“To have three stranded dead off the Southern California coast in three weeks is unusual. The museum is working to help determine the contributing factor to the ship strikes.”
Blue whales are the largest animals on the planet and reside in all oceans. An abundance of krill, a main food source for blue whales, has attracted many of them to the busy shipping paths off the Southern California coast.
The whales live almost entirely on krill, which are shrimp-like zooplankton, and consume up to 8,000 pounds of it per day.
The necropsy of the third blue whale was completed on Sept. 22. According to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, the whale died of a smashed skull and extensive damage to the skeleton due to a ship strike.
The bones also showed discoloration, indicating that the whale was alive at the point of impact, and there were large dark stains in the muscle and tissue signifying that the whale bled internally and death was instant.
The whale is currently floating in the waters off Anacapa Island.
A necropsy of the second blue whale found in Ventura County also revealed that the most likely cause of death was a ship strike along the backside of the whale, according to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. It is now buried just outside Faria County Beach.
The necropsies stated that there is no evidence linking sonar to the death of the blue whales that were stranded in Ventura County, according to Moorman.
Updates of the necropsies on those blue whales stranded in Ventura County will be available in about two weeks.
The stranded blue whale found in Long Beach Harbor was towed out to sea; a necropsy was never performed.