A humpback whale that had captured the hearts of Montrealers before being found dead on Tuesday in the St. Lawrence River near Quebec city, was probably the victim of a collision with a boat, the veterinarian said on Wednesday who directed his necropsy, Stéphane Lair. It was a ten meter female weighing 17 tonnes and aged 2 to 3 years.
The animal's carcass, the jumps of which had amazed hundreds of curious people in Montreal in recent days, had been recovered in the St. Lawrence River and slipped on the bank at Sainte-Anne-de-Sorel, 90 km to the west. is from Montreal, this Tuesday evening. "The animal still showed signs of possible trauma […] which strongly suggests that the animal was hit by a boat," he said. A necropsy report supposed to be produced "within a month or two" should provide "a more precise diagnosis," he added.
"We don't know what happened"
His team, however, will only be able to carry out "a fairly limited amount of analysis (...) in the internal organs" of the animal, due to its "fairly advanced state of decomposition". The whale, also known as the humpback whale, was seen this Sunday for the last time.
"We don't know what happened," said biologist Robert Michaud, coordinator of the Quebec Emergency Network for Marine Mammals (RQUMM), an association mandated by the Canadian government to protect cetaceans in the St. Lawrence. . "We knew it was an animal that was in good health", which had "no problems with chronic diseases", he nevertheless recalled.
"It is a regular phenomenon [...]"
There were “very few options” for intervention, according to him, given the fact that “the animal made a series of choices, decisions or errors that brought it to Montreal”. "It is a phenomenon not very frequent, but regular" among young whales to go and explore environments that do not constitute their natural habitat, added Robert Michaud.
For him, "the history of cohabitation with whales in the St. Lawrence", where there are 13 species of cetaceans, "it's a big issue". "His passage to Montreal will perhaps highlight the difficulty of this cohabitation" on this important axis of maritime transport to the interior of the continent. He said he hoped that the animal will have left "a happy legacy" from its passage to Montreal by making "many people" realize that "only 450 km downstream from the Jacques-Cartier bridge live magnificent animals".
"It is important to look at this in a positive light," added Stéphane Lair, stressing that the humpback whale "had almost completely disappeared" following an "intensive hunt" and that it is no longer "threatened" today. " "The population has grown quite significantly in the past few decades as a result of conservation measures," he said.
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