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Dead Oregon Coast Whale Buried After Tide Fails to Wash It Out |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, Yachats & Florence.
06/01/07
Secrets of the Season |
Dead Oregon Coast Whale Buried After Tide Fails to Wash It Out
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| Whale photos courtesy Whale Watch Center |
(Seal Rock, Oregon) – About seven miles south of the tourist resort town of Newport, a major media uproar began on Sunday and ended early Thursday morning.
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A 30-ton, 37-foot female gray whale that washed up and caused a stir among visitors and law enforcement officials was buried in the sand Thursday morning.
A spokesman for Oregon State Parks said crews used a bulldozer to push the great beast up the beach about 200 yards, where it was buried deep in the sand. The beach where it lay was too rocky.
The
whale washed up on Sunday morning on a somewhat hidden county beach access
just north of Seal Rock. In spite of its relative isolation, the beach
was covered with onlookers over the busy weekend, poking and prodding
the creature and endangering themselves.
Morris Grover, head of the Whale Watch Center in Depoe Bay, estimated there were about 50 people on this normally deserted beach when he ventured out there this weekend. “I would say hundreds of people have visited it since it arrived,” he said.
Some had been snagging bits of baleen from the deceased cetacean – a part of the whale that’s in the mouth and looks like a giant filter. Not only is it illegal to harass or disturb any animal on the beach that’s dead or alive, but it can carry a variety of diseases.
Authorities
are still seeking those responsible for the body part thefts, hoping to
arrest and fully prosecute them.
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It was hoped the whale would wash back out with a high tide on Wednesday night, but that failed to happen. BeachConnection.net staff went out onto the beach about 10 p.m., where it was fairly visible beneath the full moon and cloudless sky. The corpse was seen half engulfed in the surf, but it did not appear to be moving at all.
“I gagged pretty bad a few times because of the smell,” said Beachconnection.net editor Andre’ Hagestedt. “It was horrible once you got close.”
Wednesday night’s calm conditions, lack of wind and warmer temperatures likely made for a high tide that wasn’t very strong.
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| Seal Rock, a few hundred yards south from where the whale washed up. The flat rocky slabs are typical of the terrain where it originally washed up, making it impossible to bury it there. |
The whale was buried in a 10-foot deep trench, although the smell is expected to last for a few more days in that area. It takes about a year for a whale carcass to decompose beneath the sand.
Meanwhile, researchers at Dr. Bruce Mate’s office – from Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute – said an analysis on the body parts taken from the animal have failed to yield a cause of death, but have revealed somethig interesting. The whale had a basketball-sized abscess, although it is unclear whether that contributed to her death.
Mate said samples of urine, eye fluid and of the abscess will be tested further.
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 Inn
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