(Contrecœur) The carcass of the minke whale seen Thursday near Contrecœur, in the St. Lawrence River, was recovered Friday morning and was delivered to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Montreal for a necropsy.
Posted at 2:08 p.m.
The inanimate body of the mammal was seen by a photographer Thursday morning near Contrecoeur, in Montérégie. He was then lost sight of, until the teams of the Quebec Marine Mammal Emergency Network found him at the end of the afternoon.
It is “probably” one of the two cetaceans that got lost in Montreal a few weeks ago, according to Robert Michaud, president of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM).
On Friday morning, the carcass was found on Île Saint-Ours, near Contrecœur, and towed to Lanoraie, where it was loaded onto a transport truck. The objective was to send him to Saint-Hyacinthe for a necropsy performed by the team of Dr.r Stéphane Lair, Full Professor of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Montreal.
According to what the GREMM said on its Whales Online site, the necropsy should be performed quickly and details could be provided by the end of the day on Friday.
Two minke whales were spotted earlier this month in the St. Lawrence River near Montreal. Fears for their survival had been raised, since they were far from their natural habitat.
With the necropsy, the researchers will try to learn a little more about the possible causes of the incursions into fresh waters, an environment known to be hostile to whales living in the marine environment, and the causes of the death of this animal.