Community Corner

So What Exactly Happens to 60,000 Pounds of Dead Whale?

Today marks four weeks since a 60-foot fin whale was buried on the north end of Ocean City.

Not long after the excitement faded from seeing a dead 60-foot fin whale — the second largest animal on earth — wash up on an Ocean City beach, Ocean City officials took a whiff of rotting blubber and turned to an obvious question: Just what do you do with 60,000 pounds of decomposing whale?

The short answer came the next day, Tuesday, Jan. 24: You bury it.

And exactly four weeks later at the burial site — the beach adjacent to the Ocean City-Longport Bridge — there's absolutely no sign that a massive marine mammal is hidden below the sand. And at least one local expert says there's little chance the animal will ever again be seen, smelled or otherwise noticed.

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In deciding what to do with the whale carcass, Ocean City had little time and few options.

"There are very few landfills that will accept them," said Bob Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine.

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He said towing the carcass back out to sea would only potentially pass the problem to a neighboring coastal town. And because the fin whale is a protected species, it is illegal to harvest any part of it — the whale couldn't be left on the beach where souvenir-hunters would have easy access.

Below the sand on the north end of the island, bacteria is at work eating away at the whale carcass.

"It acts like a slow cooker," Schoelkopf said.

The process works quicker for whales that die at sea or that are stranded on beaches — assisted by scavenging species and the open air or water. Schoelkopf estimated that it may take as long as three years for the whale to fully decompose.

It is buried at a spot on the beach with the highest elevation — where the city harvests sand for transport to to other beaches. A sperm whale that died in the bay near the Ninth Street Bridge 20 years ago is buried at the same spot. There appears to be little danger that the whale would be exposed by erosion.

The beach is on the Great Egg Harbor Inlet, where tidal currents make swimming extremely dangerous. It is poplular with fishermen and local families.

When the sperm whale was buried in the 1990s, beachgoers couldn't tell a week later, Schoelkopf said. And that appears to be the case again this time.

The burial marked the end of a massive logistical effort that started with Marine Mammal Stranding Center technicians and volunteers performing a necropsy on the fin whale on the beach at Seventh Street, where the whale washed up on Monday, Jan. 23.

Using flensing blades confiscated from foreign whaling ships that came into ports in the U.S. (where whaling is illegal) and redistributed to centers like Schoelkopf's, workers removed a layer of blubber to expose muscle.

Schoelkopf said because the whale's layer of muscle showed signs of trauma, it was alive when it was likely struck by a ship. But when the layer of muscle was removed to expose ribs and vertebrae, the traumatized area was not as big or as severely damaged, Schoelkopf said.

He speculates the whale may have suffered a glancing blow from a ship that would not show visible signs of damage (unlike some large ships that have actually impaled whales on their bow thrusters).

Ocean City carpenter Mike Lukens, who came down to the beach to "say hi" to his daughter, Halley Martinez, an education coordinator with the Stranding Center, found himself volunteering to assist and ultimately donning foul-weather gear and wielding a flensing blade.

"I was amazed at how tough it was," Lukens said.

He said he had to resharpen the blade after each top-to-bottom cut into the whale.

"It was surprised by how human-like it was," Lukens said, taking note of everything from breasts and shoulder sockets to a softball-sized eyeball that one of the volunteers held in her hand.

Lukens said the volunteers ultimately succeeded in cutting the whale into about five sections that were hauled away by Department of Public Works crews over the course of a day and a half.

The crews hauled the whale to its burial spot two miles up the beach.

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See information on two whale-related events coming up in Ocean City.
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