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Posted: 7th July 2014

Whale post mortem suggests entanglement in fish farm
Humpback whale
Humpback whale found dead beneath the nets of a salmon pen

It is believed that that a young humpback whale, found drowned off the coast of the Isle of Mull, died after swimming into a salmon farm. Post-mortem results suggest that the animal became trapped under a salmon pen and subsequently drowned.

Aided by staff from the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, the post-mortem was carried out by Dr Andrew Brownlow from Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), which coordinates the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme. Every year over 400 marine mammals are stranded around the coast of Scotland and any cases suitable for post-mortem are examined by the project.

Due to the logistics involved in recovering the animal from the salmon pen, it was around 36 hours after the discovery before the whale could be post mortemed. However, it was still in a relatively fresh condition and therefore a reasonably confident diagnosis could be reached.  

Andrew Brownlow says: “It is obviously very unfortunate when marine animals become entangled in this way, but it is thankfully still a relatively rare occurrence. We are still running tests on the case to investigate if there was any underlying reason which could explain the unusual behaviour, however it is possible that this was simply a young, inquisitive, maybe even hungry animal who took a wrong turning".

All dead strandings should be reported to the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Sheme. The strandings projects was set up in 1992, led by SRUC, funded by Marine Scotland and supported by National Museums Scotland. The project aims to collate, analyse and report data for all marine mammals, marine turtle and basking shark strandings. 



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