A small whale washed up on the beach here in Wilmington. It apparently is a Minke Whale. There is no cause of death at the moment, but officials from the local aquarium are picking up the carcass at some point to do a necropsy. The whale was torn up quite a bit, with a huge section of flesh torn out, most likely by sharks. In recent weeks a fairly large great white shark has been spotted, and also a sperm whale, off the southeastern North Carolina coast.

Technical details – I only used flash in one of the images seen here, it should be fairly obvious which one. The others were exposures of around thirty seconds or so, using moonlight and light coming from the boardwalk behind me. This enabled me to almost completely eliminate the yellow police tape and spectators walking around the whale, as well as giving a nice cool blue tone to the picture. I love shooting this way.

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