New England Aquarium The carcass of a very rarely seen, 17-foot, toothed whale with a long slender snout washed up on Jones Beach in Plymouth Friday. 
 
 The carcass of a rare beaked whale washed ashore Friday on Plymouth Long Beach, offering an unusual research opportunity for local marine biologists unaccustomed to sightings of the deep-sea mammal. 
 
 The female whale — 17 feet long, with a long, slender, toothed snout, and weighing almost a ton — is thought to be a Sowerby’s beaked whale, according to the New England Aquarium. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Beaked whales are “so rarely seen that New England Aquarium biologists have been conferring to determine the exact species,” aquarium officials said in a statement Saturday. The whales are usually found on the continental shelf, hundreds of miles out to sea in the deep ocean, officials said. 
 
 Little is known about the Sowerby’s beaked whale, which are most often seen by commercial fishermen who catch them alongside other sea creatures. New England is believed to be the southern end of the mammal’s range, which extends north into the sub-Arctic, experts said. 
 
 Staff at the aquarium last handled a beaked whale in 2006 in Duxbury, the statement said. 
 
 The purple-hued, dark skinned whale, which resembled a giant dolphin, was such an odd sight that “everybody was kind of scratching their heads,” said Plymouth harbormaster Chad Hunter in a phone interview Saturday. 
 
 Officials received a report for the beached sea mammal at about 10 a.m. Friday, Hunter said. It was stuck on a rocky area of shore during low tide, and “there was no way to get to it and get it out of there,” he said. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 The whale’s weight and inconvenient location meant they needed to wait until about 5 p.m. for high tide to remove the carcass, Hunter said. The harbormaster’s office towed it to the pier and lifted it by crane onto an aquarium trailer. 
 
 Aquarium biologists were performing a necropsy on the whale Saturday afternoon, assisted by staff from the Cape Cod-based International Fund for Animal Welfare. The results were not immediately available. 
 
 It appeared to be fresh, in good condition, and “did not have any obvious entanglement gear or scars or obvious trauma from a vessel strike,” according to the aquarium statement. 
 
 Sowerby’s beaked whales were named after English scientist and watercolor artist John Sowerby, who described one of the species that was stranded in Scotland’s Moray Firth in 1800, according to the nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation. They are not often seen in the wild, but are among the most commonly stranded species of beaked whale, according to the conservation. 
 
 Few organizations have substantial data on beaked whales, though there more than 20 species of them living in the deep ocean, said aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse. When one surfaces, everyone in the marine biology community pays attention, he said. 
 
 To have a beaked whale specimen offers a chance for “a glancing insight into a marine species that not much is known of,” LaCasse said. ||||| This undated photo provided by the New England Aquarium shows the carcass of rarely-seen deep water beaked whale that washed ashore on Jones Beach in Plymouth, Mass. Aquarium biologists and staff from... (Associated Press) 
 
 This undated photo provided by the New England Aquarium shows the carcass of rarely-seen deep water beaked whale that washed ashore on Jones Beach in Plymouth, Mass. Aquarium biologists and staff from... (Associated Press) 
 
 BOSTON (AP) — Biologists with the New England Aquarium are investigating what may have caused a rarely-seen deep water whale to wash up on a Massachusetts beach. 
 
 The carcass of the 17-foot female, weighing almost a ton, was found Friday on Jones Beach in Plymouth. 
 
 Aquarium biologists and staff from the International Fund for Animal Welfare are performing a necrospy at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They believe the whale is a Sowerby's beaked whale, but the aquarium hasn't handled a beaked whale since 2006. 
 
 Several species of beaked whales are found about 200 miles offshore in the North Atlantic. 
 
 The whales have long, slender snouts and feed in cold, deep water on small fish. Commercial fishermen sometimes net them accidentally. 
 
 The carcass offers a chance for biologists to learn more about them. ||||| Karen Hartman 
 
 Sowerby's beaked whale 
 
 Mesoplodon bidens 
 
 Other names: North Sea beaked whale 
 
 North Atlantic beaked whale Maximum length: Male: 5.5m 
 
 Female: 5.1m 
 
 Calf: 2.4m Maximum weight: Male: 1,300kg 
 
 Female: 1,300kg 
 
 Calf: Unknown Diet: Squid 
 
 Small fish Estimated population: Unknown Unknown IUCN Listing: DD DD CITES Appendix: II II CMS Appendix: Not Listed Not Listed 
 
 Classification: Sowerby's beaked whale was the first of the beaked whales to be discovered. An individual was stranded in the Moray Firth in 1800, and described four years later by the watercolour artist John Sowerby. While it is not commonly seen in the wild, it is one of the most commonly stranded beaked whales. 
 
 Appearance: From stranded whales a physical description of Sowerby's beaked whales can be made. It has a long, slender beak resembling a dolphin's, and a low melon in front of the blowhole. A pair of teeth erupt midway along the beak in adult males. This feature is distinctive, but is difficult to use as a means of identification as the teeth are only visible at close range. It has a spindle-shaped body and is dark bluish-grey in colour, with a sandy colouration on the head and beak. The underside is lighter, especially in young animals, with grey or white spots. The flippers are long compared to other species in the beaked whale family. The dorsal fin is small and curved with a rounded tip. Their tail flukes are dark on both sides and as with other Mesoplodonts, there is no middle notch. 
 
 Behaviour: Little is known about this beaked whale's behaviour as they are rarely seen at sea. Sowerby's whales have been described as bringing their heads out of the water at a steep angle when surfacing. They have been seen in groups of up to ten individuals, and they have occasionally been seen tail-slapping, breaching and spy-hopping. Dives of between 12 and 28 minutes have been recorded with the whale resurfacing up to 800m away from where they last dived. When stranded they make a sound similar to that of a cow mooing. 
 
 Distribution: Sowerby's beaked whales have one of the most northerly distributions of all the beaked whales. They are found in the eastern North Atlantic, in the seas around Norway, the UK and Iceland, and in the western North Atlantic off of Canada and Massachusetts, USA. As with other species of beaked whales, Sowerby's beaked whales prefer deeper waters and are found offshore past the continental shelf. Threats to the species may include incidental whaling, accidental entanglement in fishing gear, climate change, marine debris, and noise pollution and whilst the worldwide population is unknown the IUCN list the species as Data Deficient. ||||| Scientists and onlookers gathered Saturday at a Northern California beach to view a 79-foot-long blue whale — a member of the largest species on Earth — that washed up dead the day before after apparently being hit and killed in a collision with a ship. 
 
 The whale, an adult female, was found on Agate Beach in Bolinas along the Marin County Coast, about 10 miles north of San Francisco early Friday morning. 
 
 Scientists who on Saturday conducted an autopsy, known as a necropsy, said it appears the animal was hit by a ship. 
 
 “We found out that it was blunt force trauma due to a boat strike,” said Barbie Halaska, a biologist and research assistant at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. “The whole left side of her body was damaged. We found 10 broken ribs and 10 fractured vertebrae near the tail and mid-body.” 
 
 Halaska said that although large whales are sometimes towed out to sea when they wash up on beaches, this one will be left on the beach to decompose, be eaten by birds and wash back into the ocean. That’s because there is a large reef off the beach, which is adjacent to Point Reyes National Seashore, she said. 
 
 “There’s no way you could get a vessel in there to tow it out,” she said. “It would be very tricky.” 
 
 Ship strikes have been a recurring threat to whales around San Francisco Bay and other large ports. 
 
 Last October, a 65-foot-long blue whale washed up dead on Westmoor Beach in Daly City. That whale, a sub-adult male, was found to have died from a skull fracture as a result of a collision with a ship, scientists found. 
 
 Halaska said that some cargo ships are so massive that the operators don’t know when they have hit a whale, even one as big as a blue whale. 
 
 “It might slow down their speed one or two knots, but nothing they would notice,” she said. “These are huge boats. People who have come into port with whales on the bow of their ships have told us they had no idea.” 
 
 Less than a month ago, on May 1, the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries instituted a voluntary policy of asking the operators of large ships to slow their speeds roughly in half to 10 knots — about 11 mph — as they enter the shipping lanes heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge. 
 
 “Some ship strikes are inevitable, but we may be able to minimize the harm to whales if the ships are moving more slowly,” said Mary Jane Schramm, a spokeswoman for the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in San Francisco. 
 
 Reading this on your phone? Stay up to date with our free mobile app. Get it from the Apple app store or the Google Play store. 
 
 Blue whales are massive marine mammals. They can reach 100 feet in length and 300,000 to 400,000 pounds. Their tongues weigh as much an elephant and they can live 80 years or more. 
 
 The whales were decimated in the 1800s and 1900s by whaling, a practice that the United States outlawed in 1972. While other whale populations, including those of gray whales and humpbacks, have gradually recovered in numbers, blue whales remain listed as endangered under federal law and have been slower to come back. 
 
 Every spring, blue whales swim north from Costa Rica and Mexico up the California, Oregon and Washington coasts, following krill, the tiny shrimp-like animals that form the staple of their diets. 
 
 On Saturday, national marine sanctuary scientists cruised in boats off the San Francisco and Marin coasts, looking for “hot spots” of blue and humpback whales and radioing ships in the area to warn of their locations. 
 
 Often when whales die in ship strikes, they sink to the bottom of the ocean. Researchers at the Marine Mammal Center said this whale was found in relatively intact condition, which allowed them to take useful tissue samples to learn more about the animals. 
 
 Halaska said that scientists from the Marine Mammal Center, California Academy of Sciences and other organizations removed the stomach, liver, an eye, a part of the ear and other organs from the whale, which will help them learn whether it had any diseases, whether it had high levels of toxins, what it was eating and other facts such as its age. 
 
 “The opportunity to perform a necropsy on a carcass in this good of condition will help contribute to our baseline data on the species,” she said. 
 
 Saturday’s incident was only the ninth time in the 42-year history of the center that it has responded to a blue whale death. 
 
 Information from a photo database of blue whales based on their tail markings revealed a match with this weekend’s whale. It was first identified off California in 1999 and seen in at least 11 different years mostly in the Santa Barbara Channel area, according to the Marine Mammal Center. 
 
 There are between 8,000-9,000 blue whales worldwide. Roughly 2,800 blue whales feed along the California coast, according to the Marine Mammal Center. They make up the largest concentration of blue whales in the world. 
 
 Click here if you’re having trouble viewing this photo gallery on a mobile device.
– How rare is the carcass of a beaked whale that washed ashore in Massachusetts on Friday morning? This rare: "New England Aquarium biologists have been conferring to determine the exact species," officials with the aquarium said in a statement released Saturday, per the Boston Globe. The 17-foot-long female that ended up on a beach in Plymouth is thought to be a Sowerby's beaked whale, a species that the nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation reports is seen only infrequently in the wild but is "one of the most commonly stranded beaked whales." The aquarium last handled a beaked whale in 2006, reports the AP. Per NOAA Fisheries, "At sea, [Sowerby's beaked whales] are challenging to observe and identify to the species level due to their cryptic, skittish behavior, a low profile, and a small, inconspicuous blow at the (water's) surface." And when it comes to being "at sea," the Globe reports the whales are typically found hundreds of miles from the coast on the continental shelf, where commercial fisherman occasionally reel one in. A necropsy is being performed; the aquarium notes the nearly one-ton female "did not have any obvious entanglement gear or scars or obvious trauma from a vessel strike." (This beaked whale may be the deepest-diving mammal on the planet.)