Fin whale hit by cruise ship

Yesterday, while hanging out with the bloggers as part of Blogathon, we heard that a cruise ship docked nearby had a hit a baby whale while at sea.

Crews had discovered it that morning while docking the ship at Canada Place in Vancouver.

Tyler and I headed over to check things out and got there just as crews were trying to remove the whale carcass with a number of boats, two tugboats and a diver.

Here’s some video of the whale actually being pulled away from the cruise ship by two tugboats:

My Flickr set of images from the accident are here…which was also picked up by the Globe & Mail over the weekend.

My photo view stats are through the roof (over 41,000 views of this set alone and rising as I type this), I just would have preferred it was because of the quality of my other photos, rather than the ones of the untimely demise of a baby whale on the bow of a cruise ship.

Makes you wonder how many other whales and sea life get hit each year that don’t get stuck to the boat.

Update: my views topped out at just over 56,000 in a 24 hour period….it would seem that lots of people were interested in this tragic accident.

Update 2: The necropsy has been completed on the dead whale. It was 70 tonnes, approximately 22 metres long and presumed to be middle aged, not a baby as originally thought.