Body of washed up whale removed from Kuwait Bay

The body of a 15-metre-long whale has washed up on Kuwait’s shores, with video footage appearing on social media showing the discovery of the mammal’s corpse, which is said to be the size of a bus, before it was loaded onto a truck.

According to local media reports, the whale was found on Sunday at Kuwait Bay and was removed in a joint effort by the municipality, the Agricultural Authority and Coast Guard.

A video clip from the day before shows what appears to be the same whale the moment it was stranded near Kuwait’s Fahaheel Coast. According to Dr Fahad Al-Senafi, a marine physicist and head of the Marine Science Department at Kuwait University, it is a common occurrence as whales often enter the warm Gulf waters from the Indian Ocean in search of food before reaching a dead end at its northern tip which is land-locked.

The whale identified as belonging to the baleen species is among the world’s largest mammals and are named after the filter-feeding system inside its mouth – long plates of baleen found in its upper jaw instead of teeth, which it uses to capture food, usually tons of krill but also other zooplankton, crustaceans and small fish.

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