A rare pygmy sperm whale died on Tuesday after being stranded in
the Yangtze estuary near the Shanghai Pudong International Airport,
despite efforts by the border police and local fishery department
to save it.
Xia Genzheng, an airport worker, noticed the 300 kg animal at
10:30 AM floating near the shore and contacted the border
patrol.
Officers tried to move the whale to deeper water and comfort it
by dousing it with water and covering it with a wet blanket. They
also called the local fishery department, which at first identified
it as a porpoise.
The 2.7 meter-long whale had suffered multiple lacerations, now
believed to have been made by a boat. It died at 1:30 PM and was
taken to the Shanghai Donghai Aquatic Product Research
Institute.
Scientists at the institute identified it as a pygmy sperm whale
and discovered that it was pregnant. Zhong Junsheng, a professor at
Shanghai Fisheries University, said there has never been a sighting
of a pygmy sperm whale near Shanghai.
The pygmy sperm whale is a small robust whale that usually only
grows three meters long. They are found throughout the temperate
and tropic zones both in the open ocean and near the continental
shelf. In China, they usually live in the South China Sea and the
Taiwan Straits.
(Xinhua News Agency March?1, 2007)
