A U.S. Coast Guard boat approaches the humpback whale carcass on Saturday, July 26. (Photo by Jamie Diep\/KTOO)<\/p>\n
A dead humpback whale calf washed ashore near Douglas Harbor over the weekend. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials completed a necropsy, but don\u2019t yet know how it died.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The dead whale drew a somber crowd Saturday as officials collected the animal.<\/p>\n
Frank Lynn Pierce was one of the onlookers. He\u2019s a local photographer who\u2019s lived in Juneau for nearly 50 years. He says it\u2019s odd to see humpbacks in Gastineau Channel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been documenting this unusual situation,\u201d he said with his camera in hand. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a whale in this area before, let alone a dead one.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the tide came in, Pierce snapped pictures of the bloated male calf. It was upside down, bobbing partially out of the water.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Julian Caballero was among the crowd watching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t even that bloated a couple hours ago, so it must be pretty fresh,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s sad to see such a young whale dead. He saw NOAA researchers tie a buoy to the body, and then a U.S. Coast Guard boat towed it through the channel to an area where researchers could do a necropsy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The NOAA Fisheries Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network completed the examination on Sunday. But Jennifer Angelo, a communications manager for NOAA Fisheries, said the tissue samples that help determine the cause of death can take months to analyze in a laboratory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A U.S. Coast Guard boat approaches the humpback whale carcass on Saturday, July 26. (Photo by Jamie Diep\/KTOO)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[35570,35571,35572,35573,27377,35574,35575,35576,25823,23829,8477,35577,79,35578,35579,35580,35581,201],"class_list":["post-44818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alaska-marine-mammal-stranding-network","tag-dead-whale","tag-douglas-harbor","tag-frank-lynn-pierce","tag-humpback","tag-humpback-whale","tag-jennifer-angelo","tag-julian-caballero","tag-juneau","tag-necropsy","tag-noaa","tag-noaa-fisheries","tag-science","tag-whale","tag-whale-carcass","tag-whale-died","tag-whale-calf","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}