A dead humpback whale, originally spotted off Southampton Village beaches on Dec. 3, finally washed up near Indian Wells beach in Amagansett last Tuesday.
According to Rob DiGiovanni, the executive director and chief scientist at the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, a necropsy showed no sign of trauma.
Often, he said, humpback whales that wash up have been hit by vessels or entangled in fishing nets, and that did not appear to be the case.
"The whale had been dead for a while by the time we got to it on Wednesday. It had spent a number of days floating around, drifting, due to storm activity," he said.
Most of the internal organs in the 31-foot female were severely decomposed, but kidney parasites were present, indicating that the whale could have been sick, according to Mr. DiGiovanni. On average, he said, a humpback whale weighs about 2,000 pounds per foot.
The whale had a "decent amount of blubber for this time of year" and it wasn't emaciated. "There's a lot of unknowns," he said. As part of the necropsy, he collected tissue samples which he said would yield important information in about a month. The whale hadn't been scavenged by sharks or other opportunistic predators.
When whales wash up dead, where do they go? "Sometimes we bury them right there where they're found. Other times they're carted off to a landfill. In this case, the whale was carted off," he said.
Anecdotally, it seems there have been more whale sightings in recent years. Humpback whales feed on schooling fish, plankton, and "whatever's in the water column," said Mr. DiGiovanni. Menhaden, a fish whose population has rebounded since catch limits were instituted about a decade ago, could have something to do with the increased sightings of humpbacks.
A.M.C.S., whose mission is to promote marine conservation, relies on both stranding data and sightings of healthy animals. "It's important that the public reports what they see, struggling whales of course, but also healthy whales," he said. Beachgoers can report any marine sightings to online at amseas.org.
"We have seen in the last five or six years an increase in the number of large whale strandings on a whole. We used to get one to three a year, now we get nine to 13 annually," he said. Humpbacks in particular are far more common now. They were once very rare. "We used to have a humpback once every 600 days and now we see multiple a year."
Since 2017, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there have been 67 large whales stranded in the New York Bight Area.
With the dead whale in Amagansett disposed of, Mr. DiGiovanni had to follow up on a sighting of a Risso's dolphin out in Montauk. "That dolphin should be feeding on squid out on the Continental Shelf," he said. "The more sightings we get helps us put together the pieces of what's going on out there."
