Another whale carcass found at Mangala river mouth

Puri: Close on the heels of a series of deaths of whales across the Indian coast including Odisha, carcass of another giant whale was found near Mangala river mouth in Puri on Tuesday morning.

According to sources, the forest department has seized the decomposed body of the whale whose length is nearly 38-feet.

“We will bury the body of the whale after ascertaining its cause of death and and send some of its parts to Bhubaneswar to know which species of whale it is,” said Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Puri, Chittaranjan Mishra.

He said the carcass of a Right whale was found at Baliharchandi river mouth in 2009, followed by another whale carcass of a Sperm whale at Keluni river mouth in Astaranga in 2014. “But we are yet to ascertain the species of this whale whose carcass has been found at Mangala river mouth today. We have sought the experts’ opinion,” he pointed out.

Referring to the large scale death of the whales, the DFO said there might be some trouble in the deep sea.

“We had apprised the State Child Wildlife Warden of this unusual phenomenon and he has written a letter to the Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoEF) for investigation.

In the last few weeks, such incidents have been reported from all over the Indian coast stretching from the Chowpatty beach in Mumbai through the Chennai coast to the Odisha coast. In the Chennai coast alone, about 60 dead whales washed ashore in a single day.

Recently, three bodies of whales were found on the Ganjam, Kendrapara and Puri coast in Odisha.

On February 9, carcass of a giant marine mammal was found from the coast near Motagaon in Brahmagiri area.

Earlier this month, a carcass of a whale measuring 33 feet in length with a diameter of 12 feet was sighted at Podampetta coast in Ganjam district on February 3 while the carcass of another whale measuring 66 feet in length was found at Chinchiri mouth at Rajnagar in Kendrapara district on February 5.

A few days before this, a giant dead whale had washed ashore at the Juhu beach in Mumbai.