How, precisely, does one ‘discover’ a dead whale on your bow?

It seems to be a fairly binary sort of situation, after all. You either have a dead sixty ton marine mammal stuck to the front of your ship, or you don’t. If you do, one would think that the state change would be immediately obvious to even the most incurious observer.

Apparently not.

Whale wedged on cruise ship bow

A rare whale was discovered wedged on to the bow of a cruise ship when it docked in a Canadian port.

The 70ft fin whale, a threatened species in Canada, was found when the Sapphire Princess docked at the Port of Vancouver, the cruise company said.

It said it had “strict whale avoidance” measures and it was unclear where, when or how the whale became stuck.

The truly surreal bit? The article indicates that this is not the first time that this has happened.  Perhaps they should start putting some sort of sensor equipment under the waterline so that the captain can be aware that he’s dragging more than kelp.