Rare True's Beaked Whale Washes Up Dead in Southampton Village

The body of a True's beaked whale, rare to the area, washed up on a Southampton Village beach on Sunday morning.

The Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation is in the process of removing the carcass from the ocean beach off Gin Lane, according to Kim Durham, the rescue program coordinator.

"It has been ID'd as a female true's beaked whale — very rare," Durham said from the beach.

The Riverhead Foundation is working with the Southampton Village Highway Department to get it off the beach.

True's beaked whales prefer deep warm waters of the North Atlantic Ocean as well as at least two other areas in the Southern Hemisphere, like the Indian Ocean, according to the NOAA Fisheries website. The species is named after Frederick W. True, a curator at the United States National Museum, now the Smithsonian,  in 1913.