Scientists are studying samples of the whale, from its blubber to its baleen.
Natalie Rouse shows a bag of blubber taken from a fin whale that washed up near downtown Anchorage. “So here are pieces of blubber,” she said. “And then we’ve got a little bit of baleen in here. And then I have another big trash bag of baleen, and then another sample bag.”
Rouse said she typically conducts necropsies in warmer months, and the winter is a slower time of year at the lab. She said the timing of this whale presents both challenges and advantages. “It was eating because it had a lot of feces, it had stomach contents,” Rouse said. “And we have some signs that maybe had some non-specific signs of disease, but that could be incidental.”
“The most direct way to get it, get rid of it, would be to let it go out with the tide, and that allows for it to be returned to the ocean, where it provides a lot of food for all the other creatures in the ocean,” Rouse said.
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