Wayward whale found dead in Amazon
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- A whale that got lost and swam hundreds of miles up the Amazon River died after a failed effort to capture it and transport it back to the ocean, an environmental official said Wednesday.
An 18-foot minke whale is stranded Friday in Brazil's Tapajos River.
The 5.5-meter (18-foot) minke whale had become stranded on sandbars at least twice since it was first spotted last week in the Tapajos River, a tributary of the Amazon near the jungle city of Santarem.
A group of biologists and veterinarians managed to examine the animal on Sunday, but the whale got away and was found dead on Tuesday on a Tabajos River beach, said Nazarena Silva, an official with the Ibama environmental protection agency's Santarem office.
The group had been trying to contain the whale in a small area of river while arranging for a ship to take it back to sea.
Milton Marcondes, a veterinarian with the Brazilian Humpback Whale Institute, said Monday biologists thought the whale was doing well.
"It is in good condition," he said. "We couldn't do a blood exam, so we don't know how it is doing internally, but we gave it antibiotics as a precaution."
Marcondes said the whale has been in the river for at least 15 days. But he added there have been cases of whales surviving more than two months away from the ocean and that whales can go about six months without food. Minke whales filter ocean water for plankton, krill and small fish.
The minke whale is the second smallest of the baleen whales after the pygmy right whale. The International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee estimates there are 184,000 minke whales in the central and northeast Atlantic Ocean.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/21/amazon.whale.ap/index.html
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- A whale that got lost and swam hundreds of miles up the Amazon River died after a failed effort to capture it and transport it back to the ocean, an environmental official said Wednesday.
An 18-foot minke whale is stranded Friday in Brazil's Tapajos River.
The 5.5-meter (18-foot) minke whale had become stranded on sandbars at least twice since it was first spotted last week in the Tapajos River, a tributary of the Amazon near the jungle city of Santarem.
A group of biologists and veterinarians managed to examine the animal on Sunday, but the whale got away and was found dead on Tuesday on a Tabajos River beach, said Nazarena Silva, an official with the Ibama environmental protection agency's Santarem office.
The group had been trying to contain the whale in a small area of river while arranging for a ship to take it back to sea.
Milton Marcondes, a veterinarian with the Brazilian Humpback Whale Institute, said Monday biologists thought the whale was doing well.
"It is in good condition," he said. "We couldn't do a blood exam, so we don't know how it is doing internally, but we gave it antibiotics as a precaution."
Marcondes said the whale has been in the river for at least 15 days. But he added there have been cases of whales surviving more than two months away from the ocean and that whales can go about six months without food. Minke whales filter ocean water for plankton, krill and small fish.
The minke whale is the second smallest of the baleen whales after the pygmy right whale. The International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee estimates there are 184,000 minke whales in the central and northeast Atlantic Ocean.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/21/amazon.whale.ap/index.html
