Yet another Bottlenose whale has died this summer, this time in Eyjafjörður. On Tuesday the 16th in the evening, a group of students noticed that one of the four whales in the harbor had been entangled in ropes supporting a buoy and was having difficulty moving. A fierce storm prevented any rescue attempt, and by morning the animal was feared dead, as only three Bottlenose whales were surfacing in the area. The whales in Akureyri's harbor have become celebrities and many people stop to watch them from land and take pictures.

The missing whale finally washed ashore 4 days later near Grenivík, about 30 km north of Akureyri. The Icelandic Marine Research Institute arrived yesterday morning to take tissue samples. Some members of the University of Iceland and the Whale Museum joined in, and the Húsavík Research Center preserved other organs for scientific study.

As reported earlier, an unusually large number of strandings has occurred in Northern Iceland this summer, followed by the arrival of several groups feeding in very shallow waters. The causes for these incidents remain unknown, but analysis of the tissue samples could help to provide some answers.