The carcass of a huge finback whale (Balaenoptera physalus) was discovered near the Italian port of Sorrento earlier this week, the Italian Coast Guard said in a Facebook post.
Authorities discovered the carcass on Sunday (January 17), before towing it to the nearby port in Naples. The whale was about 20 meters long and probably weighed more than 77 tons (70 tons) – probably making the corpse “one of the largest” ever found in the Mediterranean Sea, according to the agency.
Coast Guard divers discovered the whale after a calf swam in the port of Sorrento in a state of danger, according to news reports. The cub would have hit his head on the walls of the port several times before returning to the bottom of the sea; when the divers followed, they discovered the corpse of the fin whale.
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The calf is presumed to be a descendant of the dead whale and the Coast Guard is monitoring the young whale’s return signals. Meanwhile, marine biologists in Naples are working to find out what killed the whale.
Finback whales (also known as fin whales) are the second largest animals on Earth, after the iconic ones Blue Whale. Finbacks can grow to 85 feet (25 m) in length and weigh up to 80 tons (72 metric tons), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They are considered endangered after commercial whaling decimated the global finback population in the past century.
Today, commercial whaling is illegal in most parts of the world, and boat attacks pose the biggest threat to finbacks, according to NOAA.
Originally published on Live Science.