A minke whale became beached near Seldovia last Friday, but successfully returned to the water after spending six hours ashore. The 15-foot whale was first reported in the afternoon on MacDonald Spit, across Kachemak Bay from Homer.
The Alaska SeaLife Center issued a wildlife response advisory after the whale was reported, and asked people not to approach it or reveal its exact location. Minke whales are the smallest baleen whales in North America, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Stephen Payton is the Seldovia Village Tribe’s environmental coordinator. Responding to stranded marine mammals is in his job description. But he says in 10 years, this was his first encounter with a live whale.
“I just went out as fast as I could, not really knowing what to expect, and it's a long ways out there down MacDonald Spit,” he said. “So luckily, one of the locals that was responding was able to pick me up on a four wheeler and drive me.”
When he got to the scene, Payton says there was already a small bucket brigade pouring water on the whale, wrapped in wet towels and sheets. He says beached whales are at risk of getting sunburned or drying out. But it was drizzly on the spit, and he says the whale appeared to sustain more damage from thrashing around on the beach.
“By the time I got there, and it was like, well, out of the water, it's belly was pretty beat up,” he said. “It was really scratched up, and everything. You could tell it had probably been, you know, rolling around on the rocks.”
Payton says he was concerned the whale would drown because of how it was oriented. It was laying on its side, almost parallel to the beach, with its blowhole facing the water. Payton says he doesn’t know much about minke whales, but that a quick internet search suggested they can drown within 10 to 20 minutes.
Once the tide came in, he says the whale righted itself. The same rising tide forced Payton and other observers further from the whale and closer to the mainland. But he says residents updated him throughout the day about the whale and reported seeing it swimming and spouting.
Payton says minke whales are no strangers to Kachemak Bay. But they’re more elusive than, say, humpbacks. He suspects a toxic algae bloom could have disoriented the whale and caused it to swim on to the beach. In the last week, Payton says there have been reports of a dead porpoise, a dead seal, two dead otters, two dead whales and, now, the stranded whale.
“There's a lot of concern right now that there might be a larger harmful algal bloom event happening that may have affected the whale, the type that it is, the type of toxin that would be being produced, you know, could cause it to do something like that,” he said.
Several hours after the whale was first reported on the beach, the Seldovia Village Tribe shared a video to social media showing the whale splashing in the rising tide.
Anyone who sees a stranded or distressed marine mammal is asked to contact the Alaska SeaLife Center’s 24/7 hotline at 888-774-7325.
