A rare juvenile deep-water whale met a sad end in the shallow waters off the Middle Keys on May 30.
A kayaking guest at Grassy Flats resort first reported the 16-foot carcass of the deceased whale, exhibiting several shark bites, in the shallow oceanside waters off Grassy Key on Saturday night.
Resort owner Matt Sexton relayed the sighting to local and state stranding network professionals, who enlisted the help of FWC officer Kevin Torres-Rosa to secure the carcass on a mangrove island before it could be safely extracted the next morning.
Working together with locals, and with the assistance of Duck Key’s Hawks Cay Resort, longtime stranding professionals Steve McCulloch and Art Cooper of Upper Keys-based Dolphin Life loaded the animal on a trailer the following morning, delivering it to FWC teams in Saint Petersburg for a necropsy.
Photos by ALEX RICKERT/Keys Weekly
Researchers identified the whale as a juvenile True’s beaked whale, a squid-eating species, about which little is known, found in deep waters of the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean. The deep-diving whales make routine plunges to more than 3,000 feet, and are known to dive to nearly 10,000 feet to find their food.
“This was an extraordinarily rare species, probably one of the rarer species that anybody’s ever seen in the stranding network,” McCulloch told the Weekly. “It only has two very small little teeth, about one-third the size of your fingernail, in their lower jaw that they use to get cephalopods and squid down deep.”
The exact cause of the whale’s death was not determined at press time.
In a separate incident, a video uploaded to social media reportedly showed tiger sharks feeding on a whale carcass near the Dry Tortugas the same weekend. Responders told the Weekly they were aware of the incident and seeking more details on the location of the encounter.
If you see a stranded marine mammal, do not attempt to touch or handle the animal. Report it to a regional 24/7 hotline, which will connect you to a local stranding network. NOAA’s southeast region hotline is 877-942-5343.
