Crews look for cause of whale's death

TIVERTON, R.I. (WPRI) - A dead humpback whale that showed up at a Tiverton beach was towed ashore Tuesday to determine what caused its death.

Marine scientists from the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration were out at Sapowet Beach to examine the 25-foot humpback. It was first spotted off the coast of Little Compton last Friday.

Janelle Schu of the Institute said the young whale had been feeding like all humpbacks do in the summer, but something went wrong -- they're now trying to figure out what. "We're going to do our best to remove as much of the skeleton as we can," said Schu.

Their questions: was the whale's demise caused by human interaction -- did it get entangled in a fishing net, or wounded by a propellor?

Like a scene that could have come from "CSI: Marine," the scientists began the gruesome task of cutting the whale open. The whale's pink flesh sprawled, baked and rotted in Tuesday's sunlight.

"If it had food in its belly, which could possibly show that it was killed by blunt trauma," said Schu. "Or, if it had nothing in its stomach, maybe it was a disease of some sort."

Another whale was found in Little Compton earlier this summer, but scientists don't know if the two are related.

The whale's jawbone, as long as a teenage girl is tall, joined a host of other artifacts from the carcass, piled in a faded blue open-air trailer baked with age.

The team was at it for hours, cleaning the bones, parceling them out for further study, and then burying the flesh in a deep hole nearby, while spectators came and went, watching the process.

"It's very interesting," said Candy Cottrell, a Tiverton resident. "It's not something you see every day."