8/17/11
Ashley Donnell and her fellow students stood on the banks of Klamath River silently watching their professor and Yurok tribal officials inspect the body of the gray whale -- known as “MaMa” -- who died Tuesday after spending months swimming under the U.S. Highway 101 bridge to the delight of visitors and locals.
For 56 days, the undergraduate in Humboldt State University's Marine Mammal Education Research Program watched the 45-foot-long giant and her calf. Donnell was there three weeks ago when the calf separated from its mother and headed downstream. She was there when the whale took its last breath at 4:19 a.m.
”It's hard for everybody,” Donnell said. “Especially the community. They were all enamored by her.”
The whale had stationed herself near the bridge since late June, delighting throngs of motorists and tourists. Until Monday, biologists said her condition was typical of a female gray whale that had just weaned a calf. Then, the whale took a turn for the worse.
The whale was swimming in tight circles and drifting downstream when Donnell and her peers arrived at the bridge about 10 a.m. Monday. At 6:30 p.m., the whale beached herself on a sandbar about 200 yards south of the bridge. Later that evening, the whale was able to right herself and swim back up to the bridge, but she later stranded herself on the same sandbar.
HSU marine biology professor Dawn Goley was with the whale when it died, Donnell said.
On Tuesday, Goley and members of the Yurok Tribe used an excavator and other large pieces of equipment to move the whale to a shallower part of the river. Goley and biologists with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the North Coast Marine Mammal Center and the Yurok Tribe will conduct a necropsy to determine the cause of death, she said.
After weeks of monitoring the whale's behavior and condition, Goley said, scientists could see no outward signs of trauma. The necropsy will show if the whale suffered from internal trauma.
”This was one of the few opportunities we've had to see gray whales up close,” she said. “We learned more about this gray whale, and we learned a lot about the Klamath River.”
Goley said the barnacles gray whales typically have on their skin when they're in the ocean were gone from the Klamath River gray whale on Monday, and her skin was showing signs of wear.
According to Sarah Wilkin, stranding coordinator with the marine fisheries service, the Klamath River gray whale was first observed by scientists in 2001. She was included in a catalog of gray whales photographed in Baja California, Wilkin said.
”We all wanted a happy ending,” she said. “We wanted the whale to return to the sea, but she didn't. In my mind, it means there probably was something wrong with her physically or medically and this -- in some ways -- was the best ending that could happen.”
