NAGS HEAD, N.C. — A malnourished and sick juvenile female sperm whale found beached on the Nags Head sand just north of Jennette’s Pier on Wednesday, Dec. 27, has been euthanized.
Officials told our crew on scene that throughout the next couple days, they will work to bury the whale within the sands of the beach.The area surrounding the whale has been blocked off with police tape while aquarium workers, health officials and others work on the stranded mammal.
The decision to euthanize the whale was made in consultation with Dr. Craig Harms, Director of Marine Health Program at the NCSU Center For Marine Sciences and Technology.
On Thursday, researchers and veterinarians performed a necropsy on the whale to try to determine why it ended up so close to shore.
"Sometimes it can be difficult," said Christian Legner, communications manager for the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. "This animal is young and very thin or emaciated and we're not sure what caused that, and some of the sampling that will have to go out will take a few weeks."
The work drew a crowd of onlookers throughout the day.
"I’ve spent a lot of time on the beach, and never seen one washed up here. It’s pretty interesting," said Nathan Worsley, who was at the beach with his family.
Others like Delilah Tangney of Spotsylvania, Va., heard about the whale after a visit to the aquarium.
"I know it’s sad, but at the same time to see it up close, it’s amazing," Tangney said.
The stranded whale was approximately nine meters (about 30 feet) in length. When born, sperm whales are four meters long and at full size, female sperm whales are 11 to 13 meters, weighing between 14 to 18 tons. Males are 10 to 15 feet longer and weigh more than twice as much as females.
As a deep ocean species, sperm whale strandings are considered rare, although this is the second stranding of a juvenile sperm whale along the North Carolina coast this year. On Dec. 20, a male juvenile sperm whale was reported on the Cape Fear beach.
Widely distributed throughout the oceans of the world, at one time, the sperm whale was one of the most hunted of all whales. In 1986, an international ban on hunting the species went into effect and according to NOAA, the number of whales is recovering worldwide. The latest stock assessment for the North Atlantic by NOAA was done in 2019 and it came up with a best estimate of 4,349 sperm whales.
