Mince Pie Meet, Titchwell, 28 December 2011

[Hobjob]

Its not that easy to take an 18 metre (I paced it out) 50 ton animal off the beech with only soft sand access.

Its weight demands heavy lifting gear, and heavy lifting gear sinks on the sand. You need two or three straps round it (perhaps more in an animal that has been dead some time). It may break up on lifting.

I have done a post mortem on a much smaller whale of about 10 metres (putative Longman's beaked - probably). My daughter did many when doing her Masters in South Africa. It took about six hours with approximately eight people. The prof wanted the bones for full id, so we had to carry those up a narrow single person path about 300 feet in blazing sun. [1] (and the Prof didn't usually come down to the beach, leaving the hard work to his students and volunteers)

Skin / muscle / offal we buried on the beach - and that needed one deep hole. Admittedly about 25 Kg of meat was taken by some local guys for eating.

What would the 'Elf & Safety' lot say about that in UK

As usual we found no obvious cause of death; since then a lot of work has been done on the ear, and it seems that disease in the inner ear is often the cause of disorientation and beaching / estuary wandering. That would need a laboratory with bone drilling and microscope magnification to prove - and someone who knew what they were doing.

We were exhausted and dehydrated by the end of the day.

Most whale deaths occur in the ocean and the bits sink and are scavenged.

Oh and did I mention that even non-putrified dead whales stink, so much so that it lingers in your nostril for days and a single wash of the blood spattered clothes is not enough.



[1] For the goulish - bones get burried in open weave plastic sacks held together by wire. This is then left in a swamp for 2-3 years, following which the bones are fairly clean.

Originally Posted by Wild-Woman

I'm suprised a museum hasn't asked for the body. Otherwise I wish someone would take the poor thing off and disposed of it in a more dignified manner.
I didn't realise it had been dead for some weeks. It must be a health hazard and I don't suppose in this country there would be scavengers that could deal with something that size. I would think within the artic circle, bears would have made good use of all of those calories.

[pressld2]

When we were there somebody mentioned that a haulage team were coming the following day to remove it. Can't remember who said it and don't know if it happened.

Dave P.

[poschiavanus]

Dead standed whales are common enough: I think they belong to the Queen (aside from treaty obligations under CITES). There was an obit in The Guardian the other day which features a sperm-whale skeleton set-out in a hall at Burton Constable.

I'm not sure if much active research on Cetacea is done anymore: there used to be a Sea Mammal Research Unit based in Cambridge. However, Margaret Klinowska, who compiled the Red Data book was more-or-less self-funded from the early 1980s, although Peter Jewell (an expert on Soay Sheep, inter alia) gave her space in the Physiological lab at Cambridge.

When I was a student the professor used to get the Navy to send him the interesting bits: I recall someone producing a sperm whale's eyeball from a bucket of formalin at one lecture.