FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

1 MARINE MYSTERY

Marine mammal experts carved up a 14- metre right whale Thursday on the red sandy shores of P. E. I. in the hopes of finding out what killed the endangered whale and at least five others this month. “We’re doing the necropsy with the expressed purpose of trying to determine why we have six confirmed dead right whales in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence,” said Jarrett Corke of the Marine Animal Response Society.

2 A TOUGH JOB

“We have an excavator next to the right whale that’s assisting the team in helping to remove chunks of blubber to expose some of the internal organs and muscle tissue,” said Corke. “Some of our team are on top of the animal and some are on the sides … They’re looking for anything, because we don’t know the cause of death.” Corke said they hoped to finish the necropsy Thursday or Friday.

3 AND THE SMELL ...

“Once the necropsy begins, it’s bad. The smell is unlike anything else. You can’t really compare it,” said Corke.

4 VILLAGE INTRIGUED

Corke said the necropsy started Thursday morning in Norway, a tiny hamlet near P. E. I.’s northwestern tip, after the Canadian Coast Guard and federal Fisheries officials beached the whale a day earlier. Photos of the scene showed sliced sections of blubber folded out from the whale and what appeared to be its flipper being held up by the excavator. About a dozen people in chest waders were scattered around the mammal, which was lying in red dirt and grass under expansive blue skies.

5 MORE YET TO STUDY

Corke said plans are being made to bring at least one more of the endangered animals ashore for examination after six carcasses were found floating in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. “They still are planning on bringing in one or two more right whales, but the details are not firmed up,” he said. Officials want to determine if boat strikes, fishing gear or a possible toxic algal bloom could be to blame for the deaths of the whales, spotted near Quebec’s Ilesde-la- Madeleine. The society said only an internal exam can confirm what may have killed the whales.