Collision may have killed whale

The 50,000 pound whale that washed ashore in the Delaware Seashore State Park on Wednesday could have died after it collided with a large vessel, official said. “It had a fractured skull and a fractured jaw,” said Suzanne Thurman, director of the Marine Education, Research & Rehabilitation Institute Inc., the agency that performed the necropsy. “Whether there was something else that caused its death first, we just don”t know.”

The sei whale is a member of the Baleen family, which includes the blue, fin and humpback whales. Adult sei whales can reach 57 feet and weigh about 70,000 pounds. According to Thurman, the sei whale is endangered and there are less than 54,000 of them left in the world.

(From delmarvanow.com, Delaware, United States, by Andrew Ostroski)