Account Login/Registration

Access KelownaNow using your Facebook account, or by entering your information below.


Facebook


OR


Register

Privacy Policy

UPDATE: Giant squid identified as whale

UPDATE:

On Monday, May 15th, whale biologist, Alexander Werth identified the squid-like creature as a whale.

According to Werth, who is with the Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, the whale was likely several weeks or months into decomposing.

"It must stink to high heaven," Werth told Live Science.

As far as being able to identify the creature as a whale, Werth said, "the grooves, or throat pleats, and the upper jaw where the two racks of baleen plates, used for filtering out food in the whale's mouth, would have been."

Moe Flannery also weighed in on the whale species. Flannery is the collections manager in ornithology and mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences. Flannery said the whale is definitely not a humpback.

Most scientists agree the whale belongs to the genus Balaenoptera, but it's unclear which species it is - either a blue whale, fin whale or Bryde's whale.

"There's lots of stuff in the ocean that we don't know about - but there's nothing that big," said Werth to Live Science.

As far as the cause of death, it remains a mystery.

While most dead whales sink in cold waters, the floating whale carcass may have been moved by tides and could have been struck by something like a large, passing ship.

However, more will be determined by tissue samples.

ORIGINAL STORY:

A mysterious giant squid-like creature washed up on shore earlier this week.

The dead creature was found beached on Seram Island in the Maluku province in Indonesia.

After several days of washing up on shore, the creature is starting to decay.



If you get value from KelownaNow and believe local independent media is important to our community we ask that you please consider subscribing to our daily newsletter.

If you appreciate what we do, we ask that you consider supporting our local independent news platform.


Send your comments, news tips, typos, letter to the editor, photos and videos to news@kelownanow.com.



Weather
webcam icon

weather-icon
Fri
12℃

weather-icon
Sat
12℃

weather-icon
Sun
15℃

weather-icon
Mon
17℃

weather-icon
Tue
16℃

weather-icon
Wed
12℃

current feed webcam icon

Recent Livestream




Top Stories

Follow Us

Follow us on Instagram Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Linkedin Follow us on Youtube Listen on Soundcloud Follow Our TikTok Feed Follow Our RSS Follow Our pinterest Feed
Follow Our Newsletter
Privacy Policy

Quick Links