Dead Whale Washes Up On Long Island Beach

A dead humpback whale washed ashore Tuesday morning in East Atlantic Beach. A private group was working to remove the carcass from the beach.

According to police, the whale washed ashore near Rochester Avenue on the sands of East Atlantic Beach. It's unclear at this time what killed the whale, although pictures of the carcass didn't seem to show any obvious wounds.

According to Paul Sieswerda, the president of Gotham Whale, a local organization that catalogs and monitors whales in New York's waters, the whale appeared to be a female about 30 feet long, which he said is small for a humpback. That means it was probably a juvenile whale.

Gotham Whale keeps a catalog of all the whales it finds in local waters, and Sieswerda said the whale that washed up was not in its catalog.

Sieswerda said that the Altantic Marine Conservation Society was on its way to the scene to perform a necropsy on the whale to determine its cause of death and to remove the carcass. It will be a while before the cause of death is determined, Sieswerda said. But he did say that other whales in the area had been found to have died from systemic bacterial infections.

For more pictures from the scene, visit the blog of Artie Raslich, Gotham Whale's official photographer.

Photo: Patch