I’m definitely seeing that white light as a whale probe-style weapon.

I bet the whales found no cetaceans on the ship so it was destroyed, with the crew taken for a menagerie - or to repopulate a planet the whale probe inappropriately cleared.

Cerritos’ cetacean officers will save the day.

Alternate hypothesis - the ship belongs to the clown-alien species of Voyager ‘The Thaw, because what could be more frightening than a clown ship?