HUMBACK WHALE DIES IN THAMES

A 28ft (9.5m) humpback whale was found dead in the River Thames near the Dartford Bridge to the east of London early on Saturday morning.

Scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and members of British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) received reports that a whale had been spotted in the Thames on Thursday afternoon, but no further sightings were made until the animal was found dead on Saturday and subsequently recovered by a Port of London Authority (PLA) patrol boat. A post-mortem examination of the juvenile male humpback whale has been conducted.

Rob Deaville, project manager of the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme said “Preliminary results from the post-mortem examination indicate that it may have died as a result of starvation, but further tests are still pending and may provide additional information about what happened to this whale”.

This is the first time that a humpback whale has been found in the Thames. The last humpback whale found stranded around the UK coast line was in 2007 at Port Talbot in Wales.

There have only been 12 strandings of humpback whales in the UK in the last 20 years,

Source ZSL and Kent on Line

Source: http://www.wdcs.org/news_protect.php?select=458