JAKARTA, July 22 (Xinhua) -- A dead blue whale washed ashore on the coast of Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province, but tidal waves brought back the carcass of the biggest marine mammal to the sea, officials said on Wednesday.
The body of the species was found floating near the coast in the province's capital of Kupang on Tuesday morning and was then stranded on the coast in the afternoon, Head of the Kupang Marine Conservation Agency Ikram Sangadji said.
Personnel of the Provincial Natural Resource Conservation Center were immediately deployed to monitor the dead mammal, said Zaydi, head the center's technical division.
"Yesterday (Tuesday) the center sent a team to look after the body of the whale, but the animal had been swept into the sea by incoming tidal waves," he was quoted by local media as saying.
The team tried to chase the body of the animal but failed as night had fallen, according to him.
Whales have been washed to coasts in Indonesia, a vast-archipelagic nation. Many of them were rescued by the local residents and officials who pushed them back to the sea. Enditem
