Dear Marmam-ers,

Just news flash to inform that a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) was found stranded and dead in Cipatujah Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia in the morning of Monday, 14 September 2009. The local news reported that its length was 11.75m, abdominal circumference 4m, and weighing approx 4 tonnes. They estimated that the whale stranded around 3am on Monday. Pictures can be found here (though the news is in Indonesian):

http://taselamedia.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/ikan-raksasa-terdampar-di-pantai-cipatujah/

This is the second recorded stranding of humpback whale (first one was in Bali in October 2007), and the third recorded sighting (first one was in Lamalera in June 2005 - Benjamin Kahn pers. comm.) in Indonesia post colonial time. Since my location is in Australia at the moment, I'm trying to find someone in West Java who could rescue a piece of tissue for DNA analysis. Not sure if it will work, for the villagers already started cutting the whale, but if we can get a hold on the tissue, it would be a great compliment to the humpback whale sample that we obtained from south Bali in October 2007; report of which can be found in the paper below (Raffles Bulletin of Zoology vol 57 no 1, 2009). This event again highlights the importance of Indonesia as migratory corridors of great whales, and how we still need to fortify our stranding networks along the Archipelago.

sincerely,
Putu Liza Kusuma Mustika ('Icha')
PhD Candidate - SEES, James Cook University, Australia
Office Australia: +61 7 4782 5262

Mustika, P. L. K., Hutasoit, P., Madusari, C. C., Purnomo, F. S., Setiawan, A., Tjandra, K. & Prabowo, W. E. 2009, 'Whale strandings in Indonesia, including the first record of a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the Archipelago', The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 199-206.