TACOMA — Officials with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife say a 50-foot-long dead fin whale floated in Tacoma’s Commencement Bay on Friday.
KIRO-TV reports that a captain of a cargo ship reported that the endangered whale was impaled on the bow of his ship.
Cargo ships have spear-like protrusions on their bows, which likely impaled the whale and killed it.
Researchers are now making arrangements to tow the whale for a necropsy.
Fin whales are the second largest whales on earth, second only to blue whales. They can live up to 90 years.
