Whale Washes Up Near Rehoboth Beach

Earlier this morning a large whale washed up onto the beach at Henlopen Acres just above Rehoboth beach.  Suzanne Thurman from MERR is on scene right now with DNREC trying to figure out how they can move it to the state park and do a necropsy.  Suzanne said this is a humpback whale and because of that NOAA requires certain procedures be taken.  They can actually identify the whale by its tail.  They keep track of all of the whales they identify, especially stranded ones.  This one was hit by a boat prop ad that could have been after ti was already dead.  There are several bites out of the side from sharks.

The whale is roughly twenty five feet and probably weighs about thirty seven thousand pounds, guessed Suzanne Thurman.  Whales tend to be about fifteen hundred pounds per foot.  This is a male whale and once they have it up on the beach, she can get exact measurements and skin samples.  With the tide coming in it will make this task a bit difficult.  When we heard the weight of the humpback whale we all looked in the back of the DNREC truck and everyone said … “We are gonna need a bigger rope” The DNREC crew has done this before and are bringing in machinery to remove the humpback whale from the beach.  This is not the whale from Port Mahon this is a different one.   That one was moved today according to MERR.

Fish On!

Rich King