Thousands of passengers disembarked the cruise ship Norwegian Joy as it finally pulled up to Sitka’s dock on Thursday morning, three hours after its scheduled arrival.
“There was an announcement this morning from the captain just saying that there’s an issue with a whale at the front of the ship, and that it was going to be inspected by local authorities, and until that had been looked at, we weren’t allowed to go into the port,” Lee Page told KCAW as he waited in line at the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal.
Page, from Scotland, said he boarded the cruise ship in Seattle last Friday on his first trip to Alaska. He’s one of roughly 4,000 passengers aboard the Norwegian Joy who were told Thursday morning that the cruise ship hit an endangered fin whale while the eleven-hundred-foot vessel was en route from Hoonah to Sitka.
Page said they weren’t given much more information as they waited on the boat about two miles offshore, and a team of responders from the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network, and a tugboat removed the dead whale from the bow.
A whale strike, Page said, wasn’t on his bingo card.
“[It’s] quite sad, isn’t it? When you think about what we’re all here for,” he said.
Lauren Wild, a local whale biologist and part of the stranding network response team, said while they were towing the whale from the ship to a Sitka-area beach, it sank offshore.
“The whale is in the cove, about 40 feet off the beach, sunk onto the bottom,” she said. “But we were able to tie it off to some trees up on the beach.”
Wild estimates the fin whale is 35 to 45 feet long, and likely a juvenile male. The circumstances of the strike are still unclear — Wild said they don’t know where, en route, the whale was hit, but she hopes a necropsy, or animal autopsy, will help determine if it was already dead or if the strike is what killed it.
“We’re hoping that we can get the whale up onto the beach at some point so we can do a necropsy and learn more about its cause of death, the health of the whale, and other life history parameters like what age demographic it was,” Wild said. “They can be really valuable specimens.”
NOAA Fisheries declined KCAW’s interview request. In an email, spokesperson Jennifer Angelo said in total, there have been 10 documented whale strikes involving cruise ships in Alaska since 2001, but not all were confirmed, and not all necessarily resulted in the death of the whale.
“It is difficult to determine the exact number of whale-vessel strikes because it is likely many collisions go unnoticed by the vessel crew, occur in remote areas, or result in carcasses sinking or drifting away, preventing detection,” Angelo said.
This is the second documented fin whale to come into an Alaskan port on the bow of a cruise ship this summer. A pregnant fin whale was hit by a ship headed into Seward in June.
Wild said typically, fin whales are seen further offshore in the Gulf of Alaska, and it’s unusual to see them in Sitka Sound.
“We haven’t had a cruise ship bring a dead whale into Sitka Sound, in my knowledge, at least in the last 10 or 15 years,” she said. “I think it’s an unusual thing for Sitka.”
Wild reminded Sitkans that fin whales are endangered, and it’s illegal to scavenge or collect parts of the whale, and asked members of the public if they see the remains to steer clear. She hopes her team will be able to get the whale to shore and get more information before a forecasted storm hits the area in the coming days.
An unnamed spokesperson from Norwegian Cruise Lines said in a written statement they are deeply saddened by the situation, and that they’re cooperating with authorities and wildlife experts in this process.
“This is a sobering reminder of the importance of ongoing collaboration among the maritime, scientific and conservation communities. We remain committed to operating responsibly, complying with applicable laws and regulations and supporting efforts that contribute to the long-term health of marine life,” the statement read.
The Norwegian Joy is scheduled to arrive in Skagway on Friday.
