Dr. Vicky Thayer is the North Carolina marine mammal stranding coordinator. She’s also a conservation biologist for the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries and an adjunct professor for NC State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
She’s been working for several decades on marine mammals and said the state sees close to 125 strandings each year, which includes about 34 different species.
On Monday, October 30, Thayer received an afternoon call from an Emerald Isle beachgoer, describing a live animal rolling around in the surf. Thayer asked if they could photograph it. They did.
“I saw that it was a beaked whale and I thought it was a Gervais. We get several species of beaked whales, but their normal habitat is way offshore; [they're] deep divers and not at the surface very often and certainly not seen live, close to shore unless they're in trouble,” Thayer said.
The whale was in trouble.
“I teach for NC State, and I say to my students [about marine mammal strandings], ‘It's as if we humans went out and laid down in the middle of I-40’, that would not be normal, and something is definitely wrong,” Thayer said.
The young female died shortly after Thayer made it to the beach.
About 37 of these Gervais’ Beaked Whales have stranded off the coast since 1990, according to Thayer.
She was able to tell its sex by feeling for ‘erupted' teeth, as the males have one pair of these visible teeth to fight other males during mating season. Thayer can also tell the species of beaked whale by where the teeth are positioned in its jaw.
Thayer and several other researchers took the animal back to NC State’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST) lab in Morehead City — and hosted close to 20 different researchers and scientists, ones from Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State University, North Carolina Aquarium, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, the National Park Service, and the North Carolina Maritime Museum, to take part in the whale's necropsy.
UNCW's Stranding Coordinator Dr. Tiffany Keenan was one of them.
“It was in pretty good body condition, not a mark on it. So we could not find a smoking gun of what this could be, not a lot of parasites at all. The tissues looked great. And then when Dr. Thayer opened up the stomach, [the 'four' stomach, which is the first one, as these whales have multi-chambered stomachs like deer and cows], it became very clear what the one thing wrong with this animal was,” Keenan said.
Thayer told everyone, “[L]isten up for a minute. We just found this, I want you to see it. And you could see that [mylar] balloon there crumpled up.”
Dr. Michael Tift was there, too. He’s the director of UNCW’s marine mammal stranding program and an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology. He works alongside Keenan.
“You could start to hear sighs and people were really disappointed just knowing the fact that somewhere, at some point, a balloon was released. It got to the Atlantic Ocean, and a juvenile beaked whale that dives thousands of feet under the water and is one of the most remarkable marine mammals on the planet, in my opinion, ingested the balloon and died,” Tift said.
Another detail made it even harder for the scientists.
“And we also found milk in the stomach. And that made it even sadder,” Thayer said.
Keenan said they believe these whales do not live in large groups, but mainly as individuals, except for these mom, calf pairs.
The whale may have been transitioning from nursing to eating prey, and Keenan said this balloon mimicked very closely one of the animal’s favorite foods.
“They are suction feeders, and they do feed on squid, as they suction in that balloon, because it's so different than a squid that they can swallow, it actually gets caught around their larynx or their airway. I don't know if I should say it's fortunate or unfortunate that it didn't get caught on the larynx, but it made it into the stomach, which can unfortunately be a longer demise,” Keenan said.
Keenan reiterates the rarity of getting to see one of these elusive animals — and because of this, not much is known about their populations.
“We don't know a whole lot about the biology of these whales because they live so far offshore. Most of what we do know, we have learned from these necropsy investigations after the animal’s deceased, and we go through the body and try and learn as much as we can, and compare it to other animals that we know quite a bit better like the bottlenose dolphin,” she said.
But Tift said even though they live far offshore, the plastics seem to find them.
“And the unfortunate thing is that these beaked whales, these extremely deep-diving whales, do actually ingest balloons and other plastics regularly. This is not an uncommon event. So things like mass balloon releases, or balloons in general, in my opinion, need to be something that lawmakers take into consideration of possible bans, knowing that they have such a negative impact on wildlife.”
Tift added that when people are planning their next celebration, they should consider bubbles or paper decorations.
But lawmakers in North Carolina have recently made it harder for municipalities to regulate things like plastic bags. Written into the state’s budget bill was a provision that local governments could not regulate their use. The North Carolina Retail Merchants Association advocated for this change.
However, there are some coastal municipalities that are attempting to tackle this issue of balloons. In May 2023, the Town of Topsail Beach commissioners unanimously passed an ordinance to prevent balloon releases, citing the threats they pose to wildlife.
While researchers got to learn a lot about this animal — and they got the chance to raise public awareness about plastic pollution — it’s still hard for them to bear witness to the whale’s untimely death.
“We as scientists are not supposed to be emotional, and we're supposed to be dispassionate and analytic, but it's impossible, and we care about this work or else we wouldn't spend our lives doing it,” Thayer said.
Resources
- If you see a marine mammal, call 910-515-7354. Be ready to report: location, condition of animal (alive, dead, or injured), identification or description of animal, contact information for people involved, and photo confirmation of the stranded animal
- Find out how to support the work of UNCW’s Marine Mammal Stranding program — the program relies solely on grants and donations to continue its work
- UNCW scientists report marine mammal strandings were down last year
