A NOAA-authorized team of marine mammal biologists performed a necropsy Sunday on a dead gray whale beached in the Copper River Delta, near Cordova, Alaska. The biologists–aided by the U.S. Coast Guard–spent approximately two and a half hours on Egg Island collecting tissue samples from the 42-foot long young adult female. NOAA first received a report of […]
Marine mammal experts with NOAA Fisheries and the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network are monitoring the position of a dead gray whale in Turnagain Arm near Anchorage, Alaska, hoping for an opportunity to conduct a necropsy (animal autopsy). The latest reported location of the carcass is a couple hundred yards offshore from the Placer and Twentymile rivers. At […]
Polar bears likely survived past warm periods in the Arctic, when sea ice cover was low, by scavenging on the carcasses of stranded large whales. This food source sustained the bears when they were largely restricted to land, unable to roam the ice in search of seals to hunt. A new study led by the University of […]
The death toll from the earthquake-tsunami disaster in Indonesia has more than doubled, rising to 832, with 540 injured people, according to Indonesian officials. Authorities have said they expect the death toll to rise. “The casualties will keep increasing,” said national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, whose agency announced the jump in the toll […]