Minke whale found dead in St. Lawrence River
A minke whale carcass was spotted in the St. Lawrence River – in Contrecoeur – about 57 kilometres northeast of Montreal on Thursday.
Teams have been dispatched to secure the carcass, and determine if it belonged to one of the two whales spotted in Montreal earlier in May – in the waters around Parc Jean-Drapeau.
The animal research group monitoring the whales for weeks says it’s more than likely it is one of the young minke whales.
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Groupe de recherche et d’éducation sur les mammifères marins are headed to the site.
At the time, Robert Michaud of the Réseau Québécois d’urgences pour les mammifères marins (RQUMM) said it was not clear why the whale would make such a long journey into a freshwater habitat that’s not healthy for it.
He was worried that the minke might be ill or disoriented, but also possibly just curious.
Michaud said that Minke whales are “the smallest of the big whales,” reaching around eight metres in length.
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“While they’re fairly common in Quebec, they don’t generally venture west of the St. Lawrence estuary around Tadoussac,” he says, “where the water is salty.”
The sightings come nearly two years after a humpback whale, spent several days near Montreal’s Old Port, where it delighted curious onlookers with its acrobatic leaps out of the water.
Despite its apparent good health, that whale was found dead in June 2020, and a necropsy suggested the 10-metre-long animal may have been hit by a boat.
