It’s still unclear what killed the endangered fin whale, but people may marvel at the sight of this large marine mammal decomposing on an Oregon beach.
Tiffany Booth, assistant manager at Seaside Aquarium, said Thursday of the rare sight, which is “sad but very educational,” and is the first dead fin whale to be seen in Oregon in nearly 30 years. He said it was the second case.
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Don’t touch it, she said, because it can transmit diseases that can be transmitted to humans and pets.
“Also, I can smell it,” she said. “I don’t know how to describe it. It smells like a dead whale.”
The 46-foot male whale washed ashore Monday morning at Sunset Beach State Park south of Warrenton. I got tangled in the rope.
But before authorities could examine the rope to determine the type of fishing gear, someone removed it and took it away, Booth said.
A 46-foot whale is seen stranded at Sunset Beach State Park in Clatsop County, Oregon, on Monday, February 12, 2024. (Tiffany Booth/Seaside Aquarium, via AP)
“The animal was still in the surf and looked like it was alive, so it was a well-intentioned person,” she said. “And they thought they were helping untangle a living animal.”
Although the entanglement in the ropes was severe, the whale was not in the ropes very long and did not die. Booth said it will be several weeks before the results of Tuesday’s necropsy reveal the cause of the emaciated whale’s death.
The whales decompose naturally, providing “a huge nutritional boost to the local environment” from scavengers such as eagles and crows to small amphipods, Booth said.
Letting things rot shows a sharper understanding of what to do in these situations than in 1970, when authorities opted to use dynamite to blow up a whale carcass that had washed ashore in southern Oregon. ing.
Whale explosions won’t happen now, Booth said, noting that the solution blew a giant whale carcass into the sky and even destroyed the roof of a car.
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Booth recommends viewing the decomposing whales in a four-wheel-drive vehicle at low tide.
