A few more....

Further to Cliffs' post below, here are a few more images (cameraphone /grabbed when we weren't in the water etc, so not great quality i'm afraid).....

The PM is due to be carried out today, will be interesting to see what the cause was, but as soon as we recovered the Whale from the water it was clear to see what poor condition it had been in..... a sad outcome, but certainly the best for the Whale. I would also like to add my sincere thanks to Briggs Marine (and in particular Gerry Walker) with whom I had spent the day (aboard EA research vessel 'Water Guardian' with skipper Mark Williams who was also heavily involved in the efforts yesterday) when the call came in..... Briggs sponsor the WinW blog and by allowing us to use their resources for yesterdays efforts made a huge difference in terms of time to respond and reduction of suffering for the animal.... Thank you!!

EDIT / UPDATE - 2/3/12

Rod Penrose, Strandings Co-Ordinator for Wales has emaqiled me the following update "It turned out to be a boy, it had pseudo mammary slits just to make me look an idiot on the radio. could only tell when we opened him up. Only just becoming sexually mature going by the testes, stomachs were empty so had not fed for a long time, insignificant burden of parasites and blubber was very thin. A pretty sick animal but nothing major was found on gross post-mortem. We’ll have to wait for further tests on the samples we took"...... Thanks Rod