Scientists said the female whale, nicknamed Staccato, had five broken vertebrae as well as a broken jaw, all injuries consistent with a collision with a ship. The researchers said the injuries probably did not kill the whale immediately, but she may have died of a combination of injuries and disease. ''Our task now is to determine whether pre-existing illness made this animal vulnerable to the traumatic injuries she sustained,'' said David St. Aubin of Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, who directed the autopsy on a Wellfleet beach. ''This degree of trauma might not have killed an otherwise healthy animal.''
National Marine Fisheries Service officials have launched an investigation to find out who struck the animal - a violation of the Endangered Species Act - but they admit it's an uphill task. Only once in 14 previous strikes have investigators found the boat responsible for killing a right whale.
The death of Staccato, found floating five miles off Wellfleet on April 20, dealt a blow to the survival hopes for the species because she was a prolific breeder, the mother of six of the 300 or so remaining right whales. Underscoring the loss, the environmental magazine E rates right whales among the 10 species worldwide that are most likely to become extinct. This week, conservationists said Staccato's death casts doubt on the adequacy of government efforts to protect the whales. Some called for a dramatic increase in the $1 million National Marine Fisheries Service budget to protect right whales. Just days before Staccato's death, the state had begun aerial surveillance of the feeding grounds and had issued its first-ever right whale alert, cautioning boaters to steer clear of at least 20 whales in eastern Cape Cod Bay. But officials at the National Marine Fisheries Service said Staccato's death might illustrate the difficulty of preventing rare, far-flung tragedies. Although ship strikes are the leading human-induced cause of whale death, such collisions occur once or twice a year in thousands of square miles of ocean.
''We have animals that extend anywhere from Cape Cod Bay to Great South Channel [off Nantucket],'' said Chris Mantzaris, head of the protected resources division at the National Marine Fisheries' Gloucester office. ''It is very difficult to cover all those areas in one aircraft.''
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