By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
A 30- to 40-foot sei whale washed up on the beach in Rockaway on Thursday afternoon. <\/p>\n
The whale was found on Beach 96th Street on the peninsula, marking the first time a whale has been beached on Rockaway\u2019s shores this year. <\/p>\n
The city\u2019s Parks Department is working with wildlife groups to help determine the cause of death. They\u2019ll later bury the whale in the sand. <\/p>\n
The state\u2019s Department of Environmental Conservation secured the site on Thursday. The Atlantic Marine Conservation Society and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration planned to conduct a necropsy Friday morning. <\/p>\n
Robert DiGiovanni, executive director of the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, told the Eagle that they currently believe the creature to be a male sei whale, an endangered species similar to a fin whale. <\/p>\n
They believe it was either a sub-adult or a fully grown adult, based on its size.<\/p>\n
DiGiovanni said they are working to determine if the whale was killed by natural causes, like old age or disease, or by anthropomorphic causes, like being hit by a boat, eating something toxic or being entangled in debris. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we conduct the necropsy, we look for all of those things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sei whales are close cousins of blue whales, and are among the largest species in the world.<\/p>\n
They are also very similar and often confused with fin whales. The only obvious difference is that sei whales have a different coloring on their jaws. <\/p>\n
Whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries brought their numbers down significantly, and they are now a protected species. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that we have them here. But to what extent, that’s some of the things that people are looking at,\u201d DiGiovanni said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach A 30- to 40-foot sei whale washed up on the beach in Rockaway on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-176668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}