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In the port of Sv. Roca in Mile (just a few kilometers from Koper) on Friday afternoon, the carcass of a 13-meter-long humpback whale was found, which had been trapped under a pier in the tourist port a few days ago. Divers from the Trieste Fire Department and representatives of other departments with great difficulty pulled the carcass of the whale out from under the pier and temporarily anchored it on the large breakwater in front of Trieste.
The discovery of the carcass of a large animal (estimated to weigh 30-40 tons, or 3 tons per meter of body length) was due to an unbearable stench that began to spread in recent days near the aforementioned pier. . The biggest mystery is how the animal ended up under the pier and why it died. According to the first unofficial and not completely certain data, it is said that both pectoral fins on the whale were missing. If this is true, we can conclude that the animal died as a result of some kind of collision with a large ship.
But there are us Dr. Thielen Genova Morijinos of the Slovenian Marine Mammal Association warned that we must be careful when assessing how this fatal incident occurred. Veterinarians at the University of Padua, experts in the analysis of this type of marine mammals, will soon examine the carcass and take all the necessary samples.
The move to sink the whale
Since it is almost impossible to transport such a heavy and decomposed animal, the pathological procedures will be carried out in one of the suitable areas of the coast, possibly even on the breakwater far enough away, where they will not disturb the surroundings. There are already initiatives in Trieste to immerse humpback whales in the sea for a period of time (as was done in 2003 when a humpback whale carcass was found in front of Piran) and after some time pull its skeleton out of the sea, which will be prepared in a similar way, such as the skeleton of a whale in the Natural History Museum of Ljubljana, and then exhibited in the Trieste Museum.
Public speculates that the dead whale was found in Mile One of three fish spotted by Croatian fishermen in front of Novigrad and swimming towards Piran Bay on August 14Based on the condition of the whale’s decomposing carcass, they estimated it had died a week or two ago, which certainly matches whales seen near the Gulf of Trieste.
Tiren-Ginov cannot exclude that the death was caused by a collision with a larger vessel, but he believes that the real cause should be left to the veterinarians of Padua, who will carefully examine the carcass and take all the necessary samples for their analysis. According to him, it is also very likely that he died outside the pier and was then carried into the pier by the current. The dog in the back seems unlikely, not only because the entrance to the pier is quite narrow, but also because this humpback whale was not the first time to appear in this port, nor was it the first whale to die here.
Humpback whales in front of Koper in November 2020. Photo: Tilen Genov
At the end of August 2002, a smaller humpback whale found himself at the pier of Porto San Rocco (which had just been built). He was still alive at the time. He circled the pier and could not seem to find the exit, so the caretaker helped him put a sailboat in front of him, and he slowly followed it to the exit and into the open. To add, in December of the same year, a humpback whale was seen in front of Piran, and in March 2003, it died in a state of decomposition and swam into the Bay of Piran in front of Fornace, just a few hundred meters from the coast.
Miracle at Sea
As early as 1831, a humpback whale stranded in Mile. In 1976, a 10-meter-long female humpback whale stranded in the nearby port of Trieste, and three years later, on the coast of the Po River Delta, fishermen prevented a female with a calf from stranding. We can also mention the humpback whale that stranded on the Piran Salt Flats in 1555, which was called a miracle of the sea. Thanks to all these documented phenomena, we know that whales are very common in the Gulf of Trieste.
They are observed every two to three years, but Tiren Ginov points out that they are very hidden from our eyes. The best proof of this statement is the current death of a whale at the Milj pier, because despite the heavy traffic, no one noticed that the whale swam to the pier, swam under the pier, and after a whole week of dismemberment (gas lifted it from the bottom to the surface to the pier) got stuck. Divers and other people who salvage whale carcasses have to use considerable knowledge and skills to salvage it and remove it, and the pier was closed for a long time.
We may learn in time what is happening to whales, just as we do now. Dolphins spotted in front of Strunjan in early summerThe autopsy showed that someone had shot him and the bullet pierced his lung, causing death. It is not yet clear who committed the crime. At Moriginos they knew that they had already detected several such dolphin attacks in Croatian waters, so the dolphin’s body was most likely washed away in front of Stronjan by the current coming from Croatian or Italian waters.
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