Cruise ship arrives in Alaska with dead pregnant endangered fin whale on bow
· Toronto Sun
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Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas ship turned up at the dock in Seward, Alaska, with a large, unexpected and endangered passenger.
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On June 19, a pregnant fin whale was found dead on the bow of the cruise ship that was docked in Seward, according to National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA) Fisheries Alaska.
Fin whales are considered endangered because they are threatened by strikes from marine vessels.
‘Bulbous bow’
NOAA Fisheries Alaska said in a Facebook post that the whale was found on top of a “bulbous bow” of a cruise ship arriving in Seward, a coastal city off the Gulf of Alaska.
The organization said a local company towed the 61-foot-long whale to a nearby beach, where the U.S. federal agency, along with wildlife organization Alaska SeaLife Center, performed a necropsy (autopsy for animals) to determine how the whale died.
Not much detail was released by NOAA Fisheries, but they did state the whale was pregnant at the time of its death.
“Please stay off the beach at the necropsy site for your safety and to allow space for the team to perform the examination and collect samples,” said NOAA Fisheries said in the post, noting that “it is illegal for anyone to collect tissue, baleen or any part of the whale, unless you are an Alaska Native collecting tissue or parts for subsistence or use in handicrafts.”
‘Death trap for whales’
Ship strikes are a leading cause of whale deaths in American waters, said marine ecologist Rick Steiner in an interview with news outlet KTUU . Steiner said the threat is growing.
“Simply put, many of our busiest coastal shipping routes are death traps for whales,” he said.
According to Steiner, ships can travel anywhere from 22 to 24 knots. He believes the cruise industry should adopt a slower speed of 10 knots or less during the day and eight knots or less at night.
“The cruise ships, they’re here to show people whales and scenery and it’s doubly ironic, or negligent of them, not to take every measure possible to protect the whales that are their bread and butter of their industry,” Steiner told KTUU. “But due to their hubris and corporate recalcitrant state, they just have not been willing to adopt a voluntary vessel speed reduction in these critical whale areas.”
There have been 108 reported whale-vessel collisions in Alaska between 1978 and 2011, according to the Journal of Marine Biology . Of which, 25 have killed whales.
Second-largest whale species
Behind blue whales, fin whales are the second-largest whale species in the world. They can be found in all oceans, NOAA Fisheries stated.
Fin whales became endangered with the rise of modern whale hunting methods in the 20th century, with the hunting industry killing about 725,000 of them in the Southern Hemisphere, CBS News reported.
Conservationists believe vessel strikes are the most serious threat to this whale species.
Earlier this year, a fin whale was found dead on the bow of a ship in Camden County, N.J., CBS Philadelphia reported. In November 2024, the carcass of a fin whale washed up near a coastal trail in Anchorage, Alaska.