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Sperm whale found dead on North Maluku coast
A male sperm whale was found dead and stranded on the coast of Seli on Tidore Islands, North Maluku, Monday, with still unknown cause of death.
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Local officials look upon a male sperm whale carcass after it was towed to a mangrove area on Mare Island in North Maluku after it was found by local residents on the coast of Tidore Island on June 13. (JP/Christ Belseran)
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male sperm whale was found dead and stranded on the coast of Seli on Tidore Islands, North Maluku, on Monday, with the cause of death unknown.
Ternate Marine and Fisheries Resources Agency official Sunapit M. Taher said the whale carcass, with a length of 10 meters and a width of 7m, was found by local residents where it was already decomposing and giving off a foul odor.
“When found its tail and stomach were rotting; however, its stomach had not burst open,” Taher said.
He said local authorities faced difficulty accessing the location of the carcass and the whale’s large size. A team was finally able to reach the location using a speedboat on Tuesday morning.
The carcass was then moved to a mangrove area in Maregam on Mare Island about four kilometers away to be left to decompose naturally.
The evacuation was assisted by several fishermen from Seli and two fishing boats from the Tidore Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Agency.
In April, an 18-m sperm whale died after washing up on a beach in Bali. The sperm whale, believed to weigh many tonnes, became beached on Bali's east coast on April 5 before locals and officials pushed it back out to sea.
But after swimming away it became stranded again just hours later on a different beach and died on the shore with no visible wounds, local marine and fisheries officials said.
Sperm whales, the world's largest predators, are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being "vulnerable" to extinction.
In 2018, a sperm whale was found dead in Sulawesi with more than 100 plastic cups and 25 plastic bags in its stomach, raising concerns about Indonesia's massive marine rubbish problem.
Indonesia is the world's second-biggest contributor to marine debris after China. (dre/gev)
