The adult long-finned pilot whale, named Double-Dip for the two distinctive notches on its dorsal fin, was well known to researchers in the area. “It was a bit of a shock to take photos of the whale’s dorsal fin and match it very quickly to a whale I know,” said Elizabeth Zwamborn, project leader with the Cape Breton Pilot Whale Project. The project has been ongoing since 1998. Pilot whales are not an endangered species, but Zwamborn said it is still important to study them long-term. “We don’t really have the kind of basic data or or the very basic information that we would need to identify if the population was declining or if it was in distress,” he said. Zwamborn said Double-Dip is the third pilot whale to wash up either sick or dead in the area this year. It is not yet clear what happened to any of them. But Zwamborn said finding the cause of death is just as important as ruling out others — so you don’t “point fingers” if the death is from natural causes. “Usually when whales are buckling on their own, there’s a reason. It could be, as I say, some kind of injury. It could be an underlying cause. Whales do get cancer, they have other problems. They age, just like people,” he said. . he said. Pilot whales travel in units, known as maternal lines, with mothers and calves. Zwamborn said it’s rare for a species to return to the same place consistently, but, in the North Atlantic, between 30-40 percent of whales return each year, including Double-Dip. Zwamborn has been involved with the project since 2013 and has many special memories with Double-Dip, including a whale-watching trip in September while in graduate school. “We had a day where it was crystal clear and it was really hard to find whales that day. It seemed like an oceanic wasteland … until we saw this … flash of light and we knew there were some cetaceans out there,” he said. . “It happened to be the social unit of the Double-Dip, which is a whale that, of course, I looked for every year.” Ideally, an autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death. But the beach’s remote location and weather conditions make it a challenge for searchers to get there. “This animal is really well known in the research community, so there’s a lot of interest in finding out what might have happened to it,” said Tonya Wimmer, executive director of the Marine Animal Response Society. If a full necropsy isn’t possible, Wimmer said maybe some samples can be collected from the animal. He said members of the society hope to travel to northern Cape Breton on Sunday to investigate the whale’s death.
