On April 19 rescue workers removed the body of a one-year-old minke whale that died after swimming aimlessly for two days in the New York borough's Gowanus Bay. The young whale, nicknamed Sludgy, was first spotted on April 17 and was monitored around the clock by local animal-welfare workers.

"It's very sad," Kim Durham, a rescue specialist at the Long Island-based Riverhead Foundation for Research and Preservation, told the Associated Press on Wednesday. "It was a very young whale that became confused and disoriented."

The 3,500- to 5,000-pound (1,600- to 2,270-kilogram) juvenile didn't appear to be sick, and was likely just too young to survive on its own, animal experts said. The event mirrored an unusual whale sighting in London's River Thames last January, during which a young adult bottlenose lost its way and died of dehydration and muscle damage.

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