Cape Argus E-dition

HUMPBACK WHALE WASHED UP NEAR MELKBOS

KRISTIN ENGEL kristin.engel@inl.co.za

MELKBOSSTRAND residents woke up to the sight of a beached 9-metre female humpback whale washed ashore in the early hours yesterday morning – before City of Cape Town officials and Disaster Risk Management teams were dispatched to remove the carcass.

Mayoral committee member for spatial planning and environment Marian Nieuwoudt said the whale carcass was reported by a Van Riebeeckstrand resident in Melkbosstrand, just north of Sout River, at 7am yesterday.

“The carcass had no external injuries and it appears as if the whale might have died very recently from natural causes,” said Nieuwoudt.

TH MMC said the carcass was removed from the site yesterday at approximately 10am and the official cause of death was still unknown.

With extensive work on beached marine mammals, both along West

Coast and in Namibia, Sea Search Research and Conservation co-director Simon Elwen said most beached marine mammals around Southern Africa were usually old, lost and/or diseased juveniles or calves.

Elwen said there had been a general increase in human-related marine animal beachings, such as entanglement or ship strikes (collisions between floating vessels and a marine animal in the ocean), as populations and human activities had increased over time.

However, from the pictures shared, the co-director said this particular death did not seem to have been caused by a ship strike- but it was an increasing concern after more than 50 whales were reported off both Kommetjie and Llandudno on Sunday with ships passing just offshore of those areas.

“Where natural death occurs, the cause of death is very hard to figure out without an in-depth pathological investigation, although beached animals often have high parasite loads so 'sickness' is a likely underlying cause or starvation – and that is possibly a cause here as many of the humpbacks around now, are hungry after a long winter not feeding,” said Elwen.

In a post on Twitter, the marine mammal sighting group Seafari shared the sad news of the beached humpback and said beached whales usually died as a result of natural causes but agreed that ship strikes and entanglement were still a big problem.

“Many people and organisations still think of 'whale season' as 'winter in Hermanus' but it's much bigger and more complicated than that now and the high number of whales off the West Coast is a real concern in terms of potential impacts with ships and crayfish traps,” said Elwen.

FRONT PAGE

en-za

2021-10-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

http://capeargus.pressreader.com/article/281676848104227

African News Agency