Australian warship carries two dead whales to U.S. naval base in California

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LOS ANGELES, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Royal Australian Navy ship HMAS Sydney pulled into Naval Base San Diego in the U.S. state of California, with two dead whales stuck under the ship, the local ABC 10 news channel reported Wednesday, adding one of bodies had been towed to the sea.

Video on the San Diego Web Cam Facebook page showed the Australian destroyer on Saturday morning made its way into San Diego Bay, 180 kilometers south of Los Angeles, where it had been conducting joint exercises with the U.S. Navy since early April.

Around 9:45 a.m. local time, as the ship was pulling into a pier at Naval Base San Diego, a sobering sight emerged, the report said, the carcasses of two fin whales became dislodged from the hull and surfaced.

One was 65 feet (20 meters) long, the other was about 25 feet (7.8 meters), the report said, both are endangered fin whales, the world's second-largest whale species, behind only blue whales.

Michael Milstein, public affairs officer for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries said, the NOAA then assisted with the carcass removal and scientists were working to determine what happened.

John Calambokidis, Cascadia Research Biologist based in Washington, was quoted by the local CBS 8 as saying that this kind of incident was rare. He suggested that the whales could be struck by the Australian warship.

"It is very unusual, and I don't know of any other case where two whales have been struck and on the bow of a ship together like this." Calambokidis said via an online interview, "It usually occurs when the whale is at the surface, and the ship is unaware that the whale is there and just basically runs into them and it can either be struck by the bow of the vessel or sometimes they are caught and injured by the propeller."

Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, also explained to CNN that whale strikes by naval vessels were rare, saying "Whales can hear ships from miles away and generally avoid ships using mid-frequency and high-powered low frequency sonars because it bothers their hearing," and only low-frequency sonar can confuse whales in shallower waters but the Australian ship is equipped with a high-frequency sonar.

"The Navy takes marine mammal safety seriously and is disheartened this incident occurred," a statement from the Australian navy said. Enditem

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