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28 March 2024

Gulf heat kills 16-metre whale off Saudi coast

The carcass off the coast (Supplied)

Published
By Staff

A 16-metre whale was found dead in the Gulf just off Saudi Arabia’s eastern shores and experts said the animal had apparently been killed by excessive heat in the region, Saudi newspapers reported on Thursday.

Saudi naval patrols found the massive dead body floating in the water opposite the industrial port of Jubail and the experts believe it has been dead for some months as large parts of it have eroded, the papers said.

Saudi Coast Guard officials said such types of whales do not live in the Gulf and it had obviously tailed vessels entering the oil-rich region.

“These types of large whales do not live in the Gulf water because of the heat, the shallow waters and other factors,” Coast Guard spokesman Colonel Mohammed Alghamdi said, quoted by the Arabic language daily Alyoum.

“It had probably shadowed incoming ships which usually dump food during the trip…fish and other sea animals follow these ships for food and it is obvious that this whale had followed a ship and could not find its way back out…as a result, it died because it could not stand the heat and could not find the proper environment in the Gulf water as such whales live in oceans.”

Fisheries Department officials said the whale was found on Tuesday and it is around 16 metres long and three metres wide.

“It is a male whale and is believed to have died some months ago as the body arrived near the Jubail coast largely eroded…...several internal and external parts of the body, including bones, have gone…the body has been handed over to the Jubail Municipality to bury it under the sand,” said Abdullah Al Zahrani, Director of the Jubail Fisheries Department.

Newspapers said tt was the second large dead whale to be found in Saudi waters in nearly a year. Coast Guard patrols stumbled across a 21-metre dead whale on Ras Tanura beach near Jubail in 2009.