The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is trying to figure out how a 23 foot whale washed up on Little Florida Beach in Cameron Parish. Marine Biologist Mandy Tomlin says whales are in the Gulf of Mexico, but very rarely seen near the coast, so it appears this young whale got separated from its mother.

"The animal was a very young female calf that was an animal that should've still been with its mother. She was a dependent calf and mom would've been nursing this animal, she was very, very young."

Tomlin says the whale did not appear to be in good health and they also know a whale washed up recently on a Florida beach. She says they did extensive evaluation of the whale in the hopes of finding out how this happened.

"Full internal necropsy where we obtained samples from all of the different organs and different systems inside the animals, as well as, genetic sampling and a suite of other samples that we worked on."

Tomlin says they took several samples from the whale’s body in the hopes they can figure out why this animal died and they hope to learn more about the sperm whale itself.

"I would say a couple weeks to maybe a couple months just to get everything analyzed and then compared with other stranded sperm whale samples that may exist around the country, as well."

 

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