Biologists have voiced two possible reasons for the incident.
At the end of last week at the mouth of the Amazon River, flowing in the jungle, found an eleven-meter carcass of a whale. Biologists from the Bicho d’Agua Institute went to the site. They conducted the first survey and put forward two theories to explain what happened. This is reported by ScienceAlert.
The body of the found humpback whale ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) is 11 meters long and six meters wide. Unusually, it lay 15 meters from the shore, spread out among the mangrove trees. Experts were surprised by another fact: the carcass of the animal was found in the summer (in the Southern Hemisphere), while whales usually swim to the shores of Brazil in winter. More about this said study team member Renate Emin ( by Renata Emin ):
“We are still not sure how he got here, but we assume that the mammal swam close to the shore, and the tide, the waves of which have been quite strong lately, threw him deep into the forest. Moreover, we are puzzled by what the humpback whale is doing on the northern coast of Brazil in February, which is extremely unusual. “
This is just one of the versions. Judging by the size of the whale, it is still a calf and at the time of death, it is probably not even a year old. It is half the size of the average adult. Scientists decided that he somehow strayed from his mother and therefore did not migrate with the rest of the whales to Antarctica. Remaining in this part of the Atlantic Ocean, he continued to swim close to the coast until he was finally thrown onto land. Entangled in the thickets, he could not return to the water.
According to another version, the whale could have died even before it was in the forest. If he swallowed plastic waste, then death could occur in the ocean, and the dead body was washed ashore by the tide. At the same time, biologists are considering other versions: they are looking for traces of nets or boats on his body. An autopsy will show the exact cause of death. Experts believe that they will be able to install it in the next ten days.
Earlier, a team of scientists from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Massachusetts determined that the northern right whale population is sharply declining due to human activity in the Atlantic.
Sources: Daily mail , All that interesting , Science alert