Esteban Parra

The News Journal

Officials have only a few clues so far to figure out how a dead humpback whale ended up in a berth at the Port of Wilmington early Friday.

Officials said they were working to remove the animal from the port's waters, where it was found floating at about 3:15 a.m. Suzanne Thurman, executive director of the Lewes-based Marine Education, Research & Rehabilitation Institute, said fishing gear appeared to be tangled around the dead whale's pectoral fins.

The whale appeared to be about 25 to 30 feet long and was not much older than a few years, Thurman said.

The MERR Institute had its responders on scene Friday and was working with others to remove the animal from the port's berth so it could be examined. As of late Friday afternoon the whale had been secured and towed out of the berth. MERR responders were waiting for it to be repositioned in order for it to be lifted out of the water by a crane.

"Getting it out of the water process got delayed a bit because it was behind a ship that was docked and we had to wait for the ship to be loaded and depart," Thurman said late Friday afternoon.

Thurman was hopeful the animal will be placed on land Friday, but because responders were running out of sunlight she was not sure that would happen.

A young whale weighs about 1,000 pounds per foot, while an older whale – which can grow up to 55 feet long – weighs about 1,500 pounds per foot.

Once on land, Thurman said they will perform a necropsy – an autopsy performed on an animal.

"If we can examine the whale, we can learn what happened," she said.

One scenario is that the whale was caught on the bow of a large ship in the Delaware River and was pushed into the port. Because these ships are huge, Thurman said, the craft's staff wouldn't notice the animal on its bow. As the ship entered the port, it would have been dislodged.

"That's one very likely scenario," she said. "The whale could have been deceased and floating and just got picked up on the bow of the ship."

Thurman said whales have been sighted in the Delaware River before.

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A crew member on a Cape May-Lewes Ferry shot video in 2014 of a humpback whale smacking the water, blowing and rolling along Delaware Bay.

Earlier this year, a dead humpback whale washed ashore on the coast of Bethany Beach.

On Friday, several workers could be seen watching over the whale's carcass near a floating berth. A few pulled out their phones to snap pictures of the whale's partially submerged body.

Debora Thompson, the port's marketing services manager, said the whale's discovery was not interfering with port operations.

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.