Stratford’s missing whale found

Mystic Aquarium, the agency authorized by federal officials to deal with stranded marine life in southern New England has confirmed the carcass found on Russian Beach in Stratford last month was pygmy sperm whale. less Mystic Aquarium, the agency authorized by federal officials to deal with stranded marine life in southern New England has confirmed the carcass found on Russian Beach in Stratford last month was pygmy sperm ... more Photo: Contributed Photo / Joe Koripsky Photo: Contributed Photo / Joe Koripsky Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Stratford’s missing whale found 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

STRATFORD — The carcass of a pygmy sperm whale that washed up on Russian Beach before disappearing last month has been found, the town announced.

“One week after the Town of Stratford issued a request for information regarding the disappearance of a deceased pygmy sperm whale from Russian Beach, the specimen was recovered,” the town’s statement said.

The statement was sent on behalf of the town, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

In an email, Stratford resident Joe Koripsky said he saw the whale carcass being recovered about midday Tuesday.

“By chance, I was driving by Russian Beach in Stratford,” Koripsky said. “Serendipitously, I saw the heavy equipment, recovering the whale carcass that had gone missing since Sunday, Dec. 30.”

The Peabody Museum was making plans to add the specimen to its collection before it disappeared last month.

Gregory J. Watkins-Colwell, the collection manager for the museum’s herpetology and ichthyology division of vertebrate zoology, said the specimen “will go into the research collection and be used by researchers from around the world.”

“It will also probably be used in courses taught at Yale and potentially also in some Peabody Museum public programing,” Watkins-Colwell said.

The specimen is the first ever collected from Connecticut, Watkins-Colwell said, and the first from Long Island Sound in decades — another specimen was collected in the 1940s from the north fork of Long Island.