The endangered North Atlantic right whale found dead off the coast of Virginia last week was struck by a ship, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday.
The carcass of the whale, identified as female #1950, was found near Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge on March 30. It was towed ashore, and a necropsy was conducted on April 2.
It was the third North Atlantic right whale to have died from a vessel strike in 2024, according to NOAA, and the 40th death in the ongoing “unusual mortality event,” a spike in North Atlantic right whale deaths, often from vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear, that started in 2017.
Whale #1950 was last spotted on Jan. 11 off St. Simons Sound in Georgia. She had recently given birth to her sixth calf. The baby was not seen at the time its mother’s carcass was discovered and was not expected to survive without its mother.
North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered with roughly 360 individuals in existence.
Their endangered status has been the basis for regulations on commercial fishing that have been sharply criticized by Maine lobstermen, who have maintained that the whale deaths have occurred primarily in Canadian waters.
Whale advocates say the deaths are hard to attribute as the whales can swim long distances while entangled in lines before succumbing, and carcasses are not always recovered.
A recent regulation requiring fishermen to color-code their lines by state connected a dead whale to Maine lobstering for the first time in February.
