Lost minke whale dies after beaching in Sound

SEATTLE – A young minke whale beached itself and died after several days in south Puget Sound – an unusual detour for the deep-water species. On Friday, scientists were trying to figure out what the whale was doing in the Sound and why it died.

“Witnesses said it was swimming around in the inlet in the morning and then seemed to head directly for shore,” said Brent Norberg with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northwest Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

The property owner plans to tow the carcass into deep water and sink it, he said.

The whale died on a shell-covered mud bank Wednesday at Little Skookum Inlet near Shelton. A team of scientists went to the scene to conduct a necropsy – an animal autopsy – and collect samples. The examination was thwarted by high tide Wednesday and was completed Thursday.

“The question is whether it went into the south Sound because it was sick or blundered into the south Sound and got lost,” said Robin Baird of the nonprofit Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia.

The stranded whale was 22 feet, 8 inches long – a female who had never had a pregnancy and was likely about 5 years old, he said.

Area whale sightings during the past 10 days likely involved this whale, Baird said.

Minke whales are routinely seen around the San Juan Islands but rarely enter the south Sound. They are not listed as endangered, but little is known about their population numbers, Baird said. Fisheries Service estimates for minkes off the West Coast suggest about 1,000 animals in that area.