Whale watchers first spotted the humpback near New Hampshire in 2009. Locals didn’t see her again until 2014, when Dianna Schulte and a tour group saw the tell-tale fluke.
Snow Plow was no regular visitor to the area. But with the help of the New England whale watching network, local naturalists were able to identify the white triangular markings, which resembled the tracks of her namesake.
The 18-year-old humpback washed ashore in Rye State Park on Monday morning. Her carcass was first spotted floating out at sea by fishermen and whale watchers Sunday. Over the next few days, thousands of people came to catch an up-close glimpse of the 45-foot mammal and the necropsy conducted on the beach by marine biologists.
As shocking as this sight seemed for New Hampshire residents – many of whom said they had never seen a whale before – the race to carve up the dead whale was not all that uncommon. Snow Plow was just one of seven whales found on the Northeast coast since mid-March.
The national whale watching community is working together to find answers – and solve the Snow Plow mystery – in the hopes of protecting and better understanding future whale populations.
Schulte, co-founder and research coordinator of the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, confirmed the identity of the whale Monday after Blue Ocean naturalist Rebeca Murillo recognized its fluke pattern in a humpback catalog on her phone.
“It was definitely the first time I’ve ever ID’d a whale that close up,” Schulte said. “It was exciting but also sad to know it was a whale we’d seen before.”
Marine biologists have been studying Snow Plow since 1998, said Jooke Robbins, director of humpback whale research at the Center for Coastal Studies. She was seen regularly – in all but a handful of years – in southern Gulf of Maine areas, such as the Stellwagen Bank area and the waters east of Cape Cod.
Snow Plow was the fourth calf of Fern, a well-studied humpback who is still alive, Robbins said.
“It is particularly rare to have the opportunity to study the death of a whale like Snow Plow, who we know so much about in life,” she added.
There were no obvious signs of trauma found during the necropsy Wednesday, so tissue and baleen samples were sent to a lab for tests. Scientists hope to determine a cause of death in weeks to come.
Julika Wocial, the senior biologist from the New England Aquarium in charge of the necropsy, said the whale had not eaten much recently, although her layer of blubber was of standard thickness – meaning there wasn’t a prolonged starvation.
“Sometimes you won’t find out exactly why it died,” she said. “But you get as much data as you can and find out as much as you can to hopefully help future whales.”
Of the seven whales found close to the New England shore this year, Snow Plow was the fifth humpback, Tony LaCasse, spokesperson for the New England Aquarium, said. Three juvenile humpbacks were found the week of April 24 – one off the east side of Long Island; one in Newport, R.I., and one in Duxbury, Mass. Another washed ashore in Block Island, R.I., on March 16.
An adult female Minke whale also washed ashore in Biddeford, Maine, and a rare North Atlantic right whale calf was found on Cape Cod.
LaCasse said marine biologists have not identified a trend among the deaths as of now, although two of the whales – the humpback in Duxbury and the right whale calf – appeared to have been killed by ship strikes.
At times, mass strandings can raise a red flag – like in 2011, when more than a dozen yearling harbor seals washed ashore in Rye within a couple of days. Scientists identified a flu variant that had previously been seen only in horses and dogs.
“It’s almost like public health monitoring within the species,” LaCasse said.
However, events such as this have also happened in the past, he added, simply due to current activity and natural weather conditions.
“We will go six months without a whale washing up, and then we can get five in six weeks,” LaCasse said. “The vast majority die out at sea, and we don’t know how. There are almost always a few whale carcasses floating along somewhere.”
But even one whale makes a significant dent in the population, Wocial said. And that makes a necropsy all the more sad.
“It’s a similar situation, almost, to what you have with medical doctors,” she said. “You have that emotional component, but you can’t help if you don’t put your emotions aside.”
Data reported to the Center for Coastal Studies suggest that about 1,000 humpbacks are regulars in the Gulf of Maine waters, from Nantucket to Nova Scotia. A network of researchers and whale watchers up and down the coast help supply the Massachusetts-based humpback hub with information throughout the year.
The Blue Ocean Society, a nonprofit based in Portsmouth, sees and identifies an average of 100 whales each year. It shares its research – which is collected on whale watching tours out of Rye – with multiple other organizations.
“The ocean is important to all life on Earth, no matter where you live,” said Jennifer Kennedy, co-founder and executive director of Blue Ocean. “Some of the things affecting whales directly stem from other issues.”
Whales are often named after they are sighted twice, Kennedy added, allowing marine experts up and down the coast to keep track of individuals.
“It can seem a little silly at times,” she said. “But it helps put a face on some of the animals in the vast ocean. They have an important life history, similar to us in a way.”
Humpbacks are named for whatever types of markings or patterns marine scientists see on their flukes.
“It’s a psychological Rorschach test, basically,” Schulte said.
And the whale watching community up and down the coast learns to associate these names with different types of splashes, songs and behaviors – no two whales are the same.
“As I scientist I should say no, but as a human I would say they certainly do have personalities,” Schulte said.
(Katie Galioto can be reached at 369-3302, kgalioto@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @katiegalioto.)