{"id":638431,"date":"2026-06-14T15:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T15:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638431\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T15:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T15:32:09","slug":"sowerbys-beaked-whale-washed-up-on-canvey-island-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638431\/","title":{"rendered":"Sowerby’s beaked whale washed up on Canvey Island beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

HM Coastguard Canvey said its rescue officers and colleagues from Southend-on-Sea had passed on information to “the relevant agencies to arrange for removal”.<\/p>\n

“The area around the whale has been cordoned off by colleagues from the local authority,” it wrote, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We urge members of the public to not attempt to go near to the whale, as deceased marine mammals may carry disease.<\/p>\n

“A plan is in place to remove the whale over the weekend.”<\/p>\n

Sowerby’s beaked whales can reach a maximum length of 5.5m (18ft) and weigh up to 1,300kg (2,866lb), according to Whale and Dolphin Conservation, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They typically live in deep waters in the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea hunting squid and small fish, meaning they are rarely spotted in the North Sea.<\/p>\n

Rob Deaville, project manager at the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP), said: “CSIP are aware of this – it’s a Sowerby’s beaked whale, which is a deep diving species and relatively unusual stranding for England and Wales, so very much out of habitat in the Thames Estuary.<\/p>\n

“We normally record roughly two Sowerby’s beaked whales a year on our patch, and the last one we had a report of in the Thames Estuary was on the north Kent coast in 2010.”<\/p>\n

He said his organisation was working with the Port of London Authority “to see if it can be recovered from its current location and moved to a more suitable location to allow a necropsy to take place”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HM Coastguard Canvey said its rescue officers and colleagues from Southend-on-Sea had passed on information to “the relevant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-638431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}