Humpback bone identified after Piast Canal find
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
28.01.2015 15:45
Scientists have confirmed that a vertebral bone found in the Piast Canal near Świnoujście in 2014 belonged to a humpback whale.
Ewa Wieczorek, spokesperson of the Maritime Office in Szczecin, with the whalebone. Photo: PAP/Marcin Bielecki
The discovery follows on from the sensational sighting earlier this month of a female humpback with her calf in the Flensburg Firth, between Germany and Denmark.
Sightings of humpback whales in the Baltic are highly rare. The species has only been spotted four times off the German coast: in 1766, 1878, 2003 and 2008.
The bone found within Polish territory was chanced upon during modernization works carried out on the Piast Canal.
The fragment is over a metre long, weighing about 15 kg.
The Piast Canal, which connects the Szczecin Lagoon with the Baltic Sea, was dug from 1874 to 1880, when the region was part of the Prussian Empire. (nh)
Source: PAP