Scientists search for answers as baby whales wash up dead in Argentina

PENINSULA VALDES, Argentina -- Investigators in Argentina are trying to solve the mystery of baby whales washing up dead in unusually high numbers along the country’s Patagonian coast.Scores of the calf carcasses have been washing ashore around Peninsula Valdes, a major breeding ground for southern right whales in Argentina’s Chubut province. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries, the whales now gather in the peninsula’s sheltered waters to give birth and nurse their young.“We're looking into the whale calf deaths based on 23 years of monitoring that we have of this same population. That's what allows us to say that this is an unusual event," said Marcela Uhart, a veterinarian with the One Health Institute at the University of California, Davis, who is leading the investigation as head of the Southern Right Whale Health Monitoring Program. The leading hypothesis is that the whale calves are suffering infections from marine bacteria that can enter their bodies through injuries inflicted by kelp gulls, Uhart said. For decades, the seabirds have pecked at whales surfacing to breathe, gorging on their skin and blubber. Adults learn to surface with only their ...