PORTLAND, Maine — Workers at Portland Yacht Services on the Fore River in Portland used a boat lifting device to haul a dead 40-foot-long humpback whale out of the water on Thursday afternoon around 3:30 p.m.
The animal appeared to have fishing gear wrapped around its tail, according to Portland Harbor Master Kevin Battle. He said that the Maine Marine Patrol towed it from somewhere around Richmond Island, off the coast of Cape Elizabeth.
By 5:30 p.m., the animal was loaded on an excavation trailer bound for a composting farm in Gorham.
The female whale was first reported to authorities as alive and wrapped in a net off of Cape Elizabeth on Wednesday, but it was dead by the time Maine Marine Patrol reached it, according to a Facebook post from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
On Thursday morning, the state agency towed the carcass to Portland, where local police helped arrange transportation to an inland facility where it will undergo a necropsy and disposal led by Marine Mammals of Maine. Other organizations assisting with that work include College of the Atlantic and the New England Aquarium.
NOAA’s law enforcement arm is also investigating the incident.
The whale was known as “Chunk” (#9944) in the Gulf of Maine and North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalogs, NOAA said.
It was originally discovered in 2015, and that same year was found in a severe entanglement of heavy rope, but NOAA and the Center for Coastal Studies were able to disentangle the animal in that case, according to the agency. The whale had shown normal, healthy behavior every year since then.
Since 2016, NOAA has been investigating a spike in humpback deaths known as an “unusual mortality event” in the North Atlantic. At least 221 deaths have been reported, including eight in or offshore of Maine, according to NOAA.
The agency is also investigating another mortality event that has left at least 39 North Atlantic right whales dead since 2017, including one that was found in January on Martha’s Vineyard wrapped in Maine fishing gear.
