A Royal Caribbean whale strike Alaska case now has a preliminary cause of death: a pregnant 61-foot fin whale found on the bow of Ovation of the Seas died from blunt force trauma. The whale was discovered last Friday, and the finding is already feeding calls for slower ship speeds in whale habitat.
NOAA Fisheries, the Alaska SeaLife Center, and Alaska Veterinary Pathology Services performed the necropsy over the weekend. The exam found the whale was a freshly dead adult female in good nutritional condition, and preliminary findings showed blunt force trauma to the jaw, spine, and ribs consistent with a vessel strike.
Ovation of the Seas in Seward
The cruise ship arrived at the dock in Seward last Friday with the dead whale on top of its bulbous bow. A local company towed the carcass to a nearby beach for the necropsy, and plans were underway to tow it back out to sea so it could sink and nourish deep-sea marine life.
NOAA Fisheries said it was working with the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward to perform the examination. On Sunday, NOAA Fisheries posted a statement saying the carcass had been discovered on the bow of a cruise ship and that a necropsy was being performed.
Rick Steiner on vessel speeds
Rick Steiner, a marine ecologist and Chair of PEER's Board of Directors, tied the case to a wider risk in busy shipping lanes. He said, "Ship strikes are already a leading cause of whale mortality in U.S. waters and the threat is growing."
He added, "Simply put, many of our busiest coastal shipping routes are death traps for whales." Steiner said cruise ships should travel 10 knots or less during the day and 8 knots or less at night, and he said the industry has not been willing to adopt voluntary vessel speed reduction in critical whale areas.
Pending testing and inquiry
The official cause of death is still pending further histological and diagnostic testing of collected samples, and the law enforcement investigation is ongoing. That leaves one unresolved point at the center of the case: whether the whale was already dead before the collision, or whether the vessel strike killed it.
A spokesperson for Royal Caribbean said the company was saddened to hear that one of its ships struck a whale while on its way to Seward, that the ship immediately reported the incident to the proper authorities, and that Royal Caribbean was cooperating fully with NOAA while awaiting the necropsy results.
The case lands against a documented record in Alaska: The Journal of Marine Biology reported 108 whale-vessel collisions from 1978 to 2011, and 25 of those were known to have killed the whale.
