PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, (PNA)– Marine mammal authorities here are baffled as to how a Bryde’s whale would end up accidentally caught in an alleged privately-owned fish cage early evening Thursday at the Puerto Princesa Bay along the coastal community of Barangay Tiniguiban and near the Palawan State University (PSU) Sea Ranch Project.
Weighing approximately over 1 ton, Bantay Puerto chief Bogart Acosta said the Bryde’s whale (Balaenoptera brydei) was sighted by residents around 8:00 p.m. on Thursday.
Residents and barangay officials immediately reported it to them, including other environment and marine mammal experts of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), and the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development Staff (PCSDS), but when the team arrived in the area the whale had already died.
Acosta said they are puzzled as to how the Bryde’s whale was able to get near the fish cages in Tiniguiban when the area is characteristically narrow and cove-like, and where the water is shallower than other parts of the bay.
“We are still finding out how it ended near the PSU Sea Ranch. The BFAR and other authorities already know and they will be conducting an autopsy on the dead whale,” he said.
As of this writing, a motor boat is tugging the huge whale to Barangay Sta. Lucia, where it undergo the procedure, and before it is buried in an animal cemetery located in the area.
“It was difficult for us to bring it to ground because of its size, so we decided that a motor boat can pull it instead to Sta. Lucia on the other side,” he said, adding that the body of the Bryde’s whale is covered with wounds after it got caught in the fish cage.
The Bryde’s whale is said to be “a baleen whale, more specifically a rorqual, belonging to the same group as blue whales and humpback whales. It has twin blowholes with a low splashguard to the front. Like other rorquals, it has no teeth, but has two rows of baleen plates.”
In Palawan, it is not the first time a Bryde’s whale got stranded on the shore. Nearly three years ago, a whale of the same species got stranded also in the town of Brooke’s Point in the southern part of the province.
It measured 33 feet and 8 feet wide. The International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species considers it as “date deficient ue to insufficient information on population status and trends” in the Philippines.