Dead minke whale washes up on northern Outer Banks; region’s third whale death in 3 days
A dead minke whale washed up on the northern beaches of the Outer Banks Tuesday evening, the third dead whale to turn up near the Virginia Beach coast in the last three days.
The whale was found on the four-wheel-drive beach outside Corolla, about two miles north of the end of the paved road.
It was a female minke whale, about 26 feet long, and had no external signs of trauma, said Karen Clark with the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education and local marine mammal stranding coordinator. The whale was discovered late in the day, so a necropsy will be performed later, she said.
The minke stranding comes after the deaths of two humpback whales that washed up in Virginia Beach Sunday and Monday.
The first was found Sunday morning on the Oceanfront near 25th Street, and the second Monday morning at False Cape State Park, which borders Virginia Beach and North Carolina.
Kristina Scott, a spokesperson for the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, said earlier Tuesday there’s been no reason to suspect there’s a connection between the two whales’ deaths in Virginia Beach, though there hasn’t been an official conclusion made on this point.
Since January 2017, NOAA has been monitoring elevated numbers of minke whale deaths along the Atlantic coast from Maine through South Carolina, with “an unusual mortality event” declared, meaning that an unexpected or significant population of a species has died in a short period of time.
According to NOAA’s website, biologists have not established if the minke deaths have any relation to the high number of humpback whale and North Atlantic right whale deaths along the Atlantic coast in the same timeframe.
