SEATTLE, April 16 (UPI) -- Scientists say they are planning a necropsy on a gray whale found beached near Seattle, the fifth of the species washed up on the U.S. West Coast in 10 days.
The 36-foot mammal beached itself about 5 p.m. PDT Wednesday and died about an hour later, the Seattle Times reported.
The whales are on their migration track from Mexico to Alaska and experts say five to seven routinely can starve to death, but if there are more fatalities so close together, there may be a bigger problem, KOMO-TV, Seattle, reported Friday.
"They're stressed. They're already nutritionally challenged; they're basically starving. They don't have the strength to go on with the rest of the migration. And they come in and they can't find food here," said Howard Garrett of Orca Network.
Lance Barrett-Lennard, head of the cetacean research program at the Vancouver Aquarium, notes the migrating whales do almost all of their feeding at the beginning of their migration
"They're thought not to eat at all on the southbound migration and they may snack a little bit on the northbound migration," said Barrett-Lennard, KOMO reported.
"It's even worse for females -- they have to swim all the way from the Arctic to warmer areas, produce a calf and swim back with the calf."
Brian Gorman, spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries was unsure as to the cause of death of Wednesday's beached whale.
"We don't know anything about how this whale died or why. We may never know. The only advantage is that this whale is freshly dead, and it's been relatively cool. So the necropsy will likely yield some high-quality tissue samples," said.
