Cruise ship arrives in Alaska with dead whale on its bow

A cruise ship carried more than passengers when it arrived in Alaska – it also had a pregnant dead whale on its bow.

US officials are now investigating how the 18.6m adult female fin whale ended up on top of the “bulbous” bow of the Royal Caribbean vessel Ovation of the Seas when it docked in the small coastal port city of Seward on June 19.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Alaska said a local company towed the whale to a nearby beach to conduct a necropsy, also known as animal autopsy.

“We are working with the Alaska SeaLife Centre to perform a necropsy on the whale to determine the cause of death. Initial findings indicate the whale was pregnant,” it said in a Facebook post on June 22.

It also warned people to stay off the beach to allow space for its team of experts to perform the examination and collect samples.

It is still not known if the 168,666-gross-ton cruise ship struck and killed the whale or if the mammal was already dead when it was lodged on the bow.

According to dedicated cruise news site Cruise Hive, Ovation of the Seas arrived in Seward on June 19 after completing a one-way Alaska cruise from Vancouver in Canada a week earlier.

Royal Caribbean confirmed the incident in a June 22 statement to American weekly magazine People.

“We are saddened to hear that one of our ships struck a whale while on its way to Seward. We take any impact to marine ecosystems very seriously,” the cruise operator said.

“The ship immediately reported the incident to the proper authorities. We are cooperating fully with NOAA and are awaiting the necropsy results.”

Fin whales are the second-largest whale species on earth, second only to the blue whale, and are found all over the world.

It is listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act.

The NOAA said fin whales are probably the most vulnerable species to ship strikes after North Atlantic right whales.