Thames's First Humpback Whale Found Dead East of London

A humpback whale was found dead in the River Thames east of London, the first time a creature of that size has been documented in the waterway in at least two decades.The 28-foot-long (9.5-meter) cetacean was discovered near Dartford Bridge, about 9 miles (15 kilometers) east of the capital's City Airport on Sept. 12, the Zoological Society of London said today in an e-mailed statement.While dolphins and porpoises are seen occasionally in the Thames, whales are rarer. In 2006, a northern bottlenose whale drew crowds to the river bank as it surfaced in central London opposite Parliament."We've had nothing like a humpback whale before -- to see something like that in the Thames is incredible," Rob Deaville, a zoologist at the society, said in a telephone interview. "It could be this is the re-colonization of previous grounds due to the decline in whaling. It's bad news for this individual but it could be a good sign for the species."Researchers carried out a preliminary post-mortem and concluded the humpback may have died from starvation, said Deaville, who coordinates the government-funded U.K. Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, or CSIP.No humpback has been recorded in the Thames since CSIP began in 1990, Deaville said, adding that he hasn't heard of any prior reports either. Throughout the 1990s, no humpback strandings were recorded in the U.K., with the first coming in 2001 and only 12 in total, he said.Global Warming, SonarOther possible explanations for the increased presence of humpbacks in U.K. waters include global warming changing the animals' natural range as well as man-made sounds such as sonar driving them off their normal routes, he said.The Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature last year said the humpback is no longer threatened with extinction because of a ban on commercial hunting that began in 1986.The whale that drew crowds to London's river bank in 2006 met the same fate as this month's humpback. A juvenile female, the whale had strayed into the shallower waters of the North Sea from its normal deep-water Atlantic habitat and, unable to feed, became dehydrated and died in spite of a rescue attempt that saw conservationists load her onto a barge to carry her out to sea.To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London