Unfortunate Whale Speared by Cruise Ship

[Dante]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width=420 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=center><TD width="40%"><!-- Yahoo TimeStamp: 1096384384 --><!-- recent_timestamp 1096384384 17786 secs not stale 28800 secs -->Tue Sep 28,11:13 AM ET
</TD><TD noWrap align=right width="60%"><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width="1%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width="1%"></TD><TD noWrap width="99%"> Oddly Enough - Reuters</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>



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OTTAWA (Reuters) - It wasn't until the U.S. cruise ship had pulled into port in Atlantic Canada that those on board made a gruesome discovery -- the body of a large whale was impaled on the vessel's bow.

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Officials said on Monday that the 60-foot finback whale could have been stuck there for up to two days before "Jewel of the Seas" docked in Saint John, New Brunswick, on Sunday, after a cruise through waters where the giant mammals abound.



"The captain of the vessel was not aware there was a whale basically impaled on the bow ... this is an extremely unusual case," said Wendy Williams, a spokeswoman for Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans.



Coast Guard officials quickly removed the body of the whale and towed it out to sea. The Royal Caribbean ship had been cruising the St. Lawrence river and the Bay of Fundy on the Atlantic coast, an area rich in whales.



Shipping routes through the Bay of Fundy were changed last year to protect the rare right whale. Finback whales are relatively common.



"This is the first ship strike (on a whale) that I'm aware of in the past year," said Williams.

 

[FunkSoulBrother]

Surely I was not the only one that pictured some rich dude losing a couple hundred grand at a blackjack table before opening this thread.:heh:

 

[SportSavant]

Does anybody know approx how many Great Blue whales still swim the oceans?:think:

 

[HacheMan]

Man that's terrible. I hate seeing things like this...........

 

[Woody0]

Does anybody know approx how many Great Blue whales still swim the oceans?:think:

All of them.

 

[miked429]

i once got drunk on a cruise ship and speared a whale i met in the bar.and when we were done guess what?she was a SPERM WHALE.god damn it must be getting late.

 

[SportSavant]

Before mans intervention there were 228,000 Blue whales swimming the oceans of the world. Between 1904 and 1978, whalers scoured the seas for this huge cetacean, most were taken in the southern hemisphere, many against the law. Current figures suggest that a mere 11,700 animals are left. As the population figure suggests, it was ruthlessly and relentlessly slaughtered for every reason imaginable, almost to the point of extinction. Now on the endangered list, the Blue Whale is protected (since 1967) worldwide by international law. It is not to be hunted by anyone for any reason at all. Suggestion are that some populations may never recover.