The body of the whale, a 9m-long female which would have weighed about seven tons, came ashore on the Roseland peninsula. It had suffered a large gash to its head, thought to have been caused by either the bow or propeller of a vessel.
Jan Loveridge, of Cornwall Wildlife Trust's Marine Strandings Network, said: 'You'd expect a whale to avoid an oncoming ship, but they have been known to be oblivious to them when resting or feeding. Most fatal ship strikes are apparently caused by ships travelling at speeds over 14 knots.
'Although whale species with a highly visible blow might be avoided by vessels in daylight, they can be very hard to see at night. That's especially true for the minke, which only has a small blow of about 3m in height, so they're difficult to see even in calm weather.'
Large numbers of minke whales were spotted by recorders in the Land's End area this summer, particularly in August and September when there were also large numbers of basking sharks. The filter-feeding sharks moved in to exploit large plankton blooms, while the minkes filter-fed on the small fish, krill and squid which congregated beneath the plankton.
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