THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 13, 1996 TAG: 9602140567
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
The carcass of Freddy, the fin whale that died Thursday near Oregon Inlet after being stuck on a Pamlico Sound sandbar for three days, flipped onto its back Sunday and is beginning to fill with gas.
Coast Guard crews tied a line around the 40-foot whale's tail and anchored it to the bottom to keep it from drifting away. They said the animal doesn't appear too bloated yet. But if its carcass begins to float, they don't want it to wash into Oregon Inlet.
Monday evening, the fin whale was still in the same spot it had been stuck in for the past week: about 2.5 miles west of the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, more than 150 yards outside the deep channel.
Officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service plan to visit the whale today - and figure out what to do with its 40-ton body.
``We're hoping to be able to sex it tomorrow and get some tissue samples off it,'' Bill McLellan, who oversees the Marine Fisheries Service's Large Whale Mortality Program, said Monday. ``Then, we'll make a decision about how and where to transport it. Towing a 40-ton whale, even one that's dead, is not an easy task.''
McLellan and other biologists had hoped to drag the animal to shore so they could do a complete necropsy - animal autopsy - on it. By taking organ, tissue and other samples, they said, they might be able to determine why the creature swam out of the ocean into such a shallow spot. They could tell, for example, if it was plagued with parasites or was otherwise ill before it went aground.
``The National Park Service has been extremely willing to help,'' said National Marine Fisheries Service spokeswoman Vicky Thayer. ``But they regretted they didn't have the equipment to handle an animal that size.''
Fisheries experts also are considering having the Coast Guard tow the whale behind an 82-foot patrol boat to the Navy's Dam Neck training center in Virginia Beach. McLellan said the 80-mile trip might be tough on the Coast Guard and the carcass. And there's a lot that could go wrong bringing such a large animal on such a long trip.
A Navy spokesman, Cmdr. Rob Cullinan, however, said if fisheries officials want to bring Freddy to his Virginia Beach outpost, ``It won't be a problem.
``We haven't received a request for that yet,'' Cullinan said Monday from his Dam Neck office.
``But we've towed three whales up here in the last 10 years. Normally, they beach it near the southern perimeter of our base at Sandbridge. They use a large tractor trailer to tow it up over the dune. Then, after they get what they want from it, they bury it with a bulldozer.''
If officials don't tow the whale to land, McLellan said, they'll try to dissect it in the shallow sound, then tow it back to deep waters of the Atlantic. They have to wait until Freddy begins to float before they can begin to move it. Once offshore, they'll cut the line and bury the whale at sea.
``We'd have to poke holes into it and, probably, throw a little gunfire at it, too,'' said McLellan. ``We'd have to burst its intestines and open its stomach to let the gas escape so it would sink. It's not a pretty picture, I know. But it's better than blowing it up.
``And, sometimes, gruesome things have to happen in nature.'' by CNB