The whale found dead in Estepona could die from ingesting plastics, as reported this Friday by an expert. The corpse of the animal, more than fourteen meters long, was found stranded this Thursday on La Rada beach in said Malaga municipality.
The director of the Center for the Recovery of Endangered Marine Species (CREMA) of the Aula del Mar in Malaga, José Luis Mons, explained that the small pieces of plastics get caught in the beards of the whales and the big ones are impossible to expel, which can cause the death of these animals.
A problem that, he points out, also greatly affects the turtles, who have to undergo emergency surgery when they ingest a plastic.
Likewise, this expert specifies that oil spills and other chemical elements are also among the possible factors that cause the death of many species, a “very serious problem” for the marine world, Add.
Although he points out that another of the reasons for the death of a whale may be the interaction with the fishing, the animal stranded in Estepona “no signs” indicating that this could have been the reason.
“Sometimes we also find young animals that have died simply because they have not been fed well or old animals that have died due to age,” says Mons.
However, CREMA is on alert, since recently the bodies of three dolphins have also appeared on the coast of the Malaga capital, as well as other cases in Torremolinos, Marbella and Nerja. Some facts that investigate whether they correspond to a coincidence, are derived from “a big storm” or there is another cause behind these deaths.
The carcass of the whale found this Thursday, which is one of the most common cetaceans in the Mediterranean, was removed by a specialized machinery service contracted by the Estepona City Council and deposited in a landfill after CREMA technicians extracted samples of the beards to carry out genetic studies.
Due to its dimensions and the state of decomposition in which it was found -they estimate that it had been dead between eight and ten days-, José Luis Mons has assured that it is impossible to exhibit it in the Museo Alborania-Aula del Mar in Malaga.