A whale that washed ashore in the island of Kauai over the weekend likely died in part because it ate large volumes of fishing traps, fishing nets, plastic bags and other marine debris, scientists said Thursday, highlighting the threat to wildlife from the millions of tons of plastic that ends up in oceans every year.

Both lanes of Kuhio Highway were closed in places on Kauai’s north shore through Wednesday evening as the island is hunkered down under an onslaught of rain.

A rare whale-dolphin hybrid species has been discovered off the coast of Hawaii, scientists say. The animal is the first-ever documented offspring of a rough-toothed dolphin and the rare melon-headed whale, a team from the Cascadia Research Collective concluded in a report released this week.

As the people of Kauai continue to recover from a devastating storm, some scientists are warning that this was something new: the first major storm in Hawaii linked to climate change.