Five whale carcasses wash up in Ghana, investigation to be launched

Five whale carcasses have washed up on Ghana's coast in the last week, officials said, vowing to probe the reportedly unprecedented string of marine deaths in the area.

Speculation has circulated widely in local media that Ghana's offshore oil installations are to blame, but an environment group and Ghana's Fisheries Commission said there was no available evidence to support such theories.

The fisheries commission is "sending a team to investigate what is going on because it's not normal", Emmanuel Ohene Marfo, a regional officer with the commission, told AFP.

He confirmed that five whale carcasses had been spotted on various beaches since Friday.

The Friends of the Nation environmental group said in a statement that 16 whales had died in Ghanaian waters since 2009, an unprecedented amount, and called for a formal investigation.

Ghana began oil production off its western coast in December of 2010, but Friends of the Nation Executive Director Donkris Movuta said the timing could be just a coincidence.

"It could be anything in the marine environment," Movuta said. "There's need to see why are they dying out and being washed ashore. They could die and get down in the sea, but why are they being washed ashore?"

Of the fives whales found dead in the last week, three were spotted in the Western Region, where oil is being pumped from the offshore Jubilee field, Marfo said.

Two others were found on beaches near the capital Accra.

Four of the whales were too decomposed to be identified, but the one that washed ashore off the Western Region capital Sekondi was identified as a humpback whale, Marfo said.

In the beachside tourist town of Kokrobite, 50 kilometres from Accra, the decomposing carcass of a whale was quickly becoming an attraction for residents.

In keeping with a local tradition, area fisherman had decapitated the whale and were charging sightseers to see the skull.

Nearby, the whale's headless body floated in the breakers. Some who passed by climbed on the corpse to pose for photos.

"I'm very surprised because I think normally whales don’t die like that," Emmanuel Quarshie, working on a nearby construction project, told AFP.

"I'm asking myself, how should this be happening?"