The first dissections on the carcass of the whale found dead last Thursday in the waters of the port of Sorrento are underway in the port of Naples. The examinations will provide further clarification on the death. This is what Raffaele di Palma reports to ANSA, which takes care of the communication of the Amp (Marine Protected Area) Punta Campanella between the Sorrento and Amalfi coasts. A first hypothesis has it that the animal was killed by a virus, the so-called whale measles. The length of the mammal, a fin whale that could be a hybrid between the two most frequent races in the Mediterranean, is 19.85 meters, a measure that, pending a final confirmation, would make it the largest fin whale ever recorded in the whole Mediterranean. From the first rumors, it emerges that the whale, a female, would never have been pregnant.
On the quay where the carcass is being sectioned, about 25 technicians and researchers are at work, all in protective white overalls, led by the team of Sandro Mazzariol, professor at the University of Padua and head of the intervention unit of the 'Cetaceans strandings Emergency Response Team '(Cert). The team deals in Italy and abroad with the management of large cetacean strandings. Post mortem evaluations will be carried out in collaboration with scholars from the Natural History Museum of Milan and the Tethys Research Institute. At a first inspection yesterday afternoon, the deceased mammal seemed compatible, for the alleged death date, with the specimen taken in the video that went viral on the web in the port of Sorrento in which a whale can be seen wriggling and violently banging its head against the dock. But last night the technicians, viewing the videos in detail, would have come to the conclusion that they would be two different specimens.