Adding to the worry of nature lovers and forest officials, a decomposed body of a 38-foot-long whale was found on the sea beach near the Mangala river confluence in Puri district on Tuesday.
DFO Chitaranjan Mishra said whales live in deep sea and are normally not seen close to coast. But astonishingly a number of whale carcasses have washed ashore during high tides in recent days.
The decomposed body of the whale was buried, he said.
A 34-foot whale’s body had been found on the Baliharchandi Beach on February 9 and, prior to this, a whale had also been found dead onDec 3 on the Astarang beach. last year a number of dead whales had been found along the Mumbai beach.
“Exact cause of death of whales is yet to be ascertained. It indicates there may be some trouble in deep sea. They might have died fifteen to
twenty days ago in the deep sea before their bodies washed ashore during high tides,” said DFO Mishra.