THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 8, 1996 TAG: 9602080386
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
Workers at a Virginia ocean equipment company offered to blast sand from beneath Freddy the fin whale to help it swim back to sea.
Another well-wisher suggested anchoring a ring of Jet Skis around the 40-ton animal and revving the engines until they had blown away enough sand to free Freddy.
A retired Naval engineer from nearby Nags Head suggested using fire hoses to spray water under Freddy and lift the whale off the Pamlico Sound sandbar just inside this Outer Banks link between the sound to the sea.
They were among hundreds of would-be rescuers who called the U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday offering ideas, advice and sympathy for the fin whale that's been stuck in the sound for three days.
Everyone, it seems, wants to save the stranded mammal.
``We've had 100 calls, at least, today for Freddy. It's been continuous since 7:30 this morning. We haven't even had two minutes when the phone didn't ring,'' Coast Guardsman Jeff Scheck said about 3 p.m. Wednesday from his Oregon Inlet station.
With its big belly wedged against a sandbar about 2.5 miles west of the Oregon Inlet bridge, Freddy is lying in about three feet of frigid water. At least 18 inches of the whale's black back sticks above the sound. Its right side is raw and bleeding from scraping against ice floes and rubbing in the sand.
Although it expends a great amount of effort just to keep breath flowing from its partially submerged blow hole, Freddy does not seem ready to give up. As Coast Guardsmen watched nearby from a boat that is half the 40-foot whale's length, the animal heaved its huge head above the shallow sound, thrashed its flat flippers and smacked its massive tail against the water each time it breathed.
Its breaths, however, slowed from every 30 seconds Tuesday to about one a minute by Wednesday night.
``That's the most incredible living thing I've ever seen,'' Coast Guardsman Jeff Parker said after wading through thigh-deep water to stroke the whale's rubbery sides. ``I wanted so bad to see this whale. But now, I sort of wish I hadn't. Poor guy. It's so sad to see him stuck out here. It just seems like if, somehow, you could take him back to the big pond, he'd be OK.''
Bill McLellan, who oversees the Large Whale Mortality Program for the National Marine Fisheries Service, confirmed Wednesday that the animal is a fin whale 3 to 5 years old, but he said he couldn't be sure of its gender.
``We don't normally see big animals stuck like this that are able to stay alive so long,'' McLellan said. ``It's pretty rare. Normally, we only get 10 strandings a year on the Atlantic coast - and most of those turn up dead.
``I think the water being so cold has helped this whale thermo-regulate itself to keep a good body temperature,'' McLellan said. ``Plus, the water it's in is not too deep to make it impossible to breathe - but shallow enough that it can rest there. Its fluke tail fins are still trembling. That's a sign of some sort of shock trauma. And it's not unusual in a marine mammal that's been stranded for three days.
``At present, at least, that whale is not terribly unhappy where it is,'' McLellan said. ``We're in a holding pattern right now. There's not too much we can do.''
Some people said they are worried that the whale might starve, but McLellan said whales can live for weeks without eating. And this one is probably in too much shock to digest food anyway.
Several boat owners offered to anchor their small skiffs alongside the whale and try to dig it out themselves. Others suggested bringing in larger boats and towing Freddy out by the tail. And some have asked why the regular inlet dredge can't cut a channel clear for the whale.
All of those ideas are good, McLellan and other experts said. But, unfortunately, they didn't think any would work. Marine mammal stranding experts from Massachusetts to Miami have been pondering the problem all week.
``Whales are tough. But they're not towable,'' McLellan said. ``There's 15,000 pounds of muscle just in that whale's tail. If you tried to drag it, with the whale pulling one way and the boat the other, you'd just break one of its ribs or puncture a lung or hurt it so bad it wouldn't be able to swim. It also could be infested with parasites or sick some other way so that even if it got back to the ocean, it wouldn't be OK if it got freed.
``And to talk about digging it out, well, you're talking about getting some heavy equipment into a very shallow spot,'' McLellan said. ``Even if you got it in, you'd have to dig more than two miles to get it back out the inlet. Or, at least, dig 150 yards to get it in the deeper channel. Then, you'd have to show it where to swim.
``The best thing we can do now,'' McLellan said, ``is to hope the tides will take it out - and keep watching over this whale.''
Fin whales can live to be 50 years old and grow to 80 feet. They generally are weaned when they're 3 or 4. This might be the first winter Freddy has been separated from its mother, McLellan said. That might have been part of its problem.
In the 12 years he's been observing whale strandings, McLellan said he'd only seen six fin whales. The last live large whale he saw stuck was in Hatteras Inlet about 10 years ago when a 66-foot sperm whale got grounded. That sperm whale lived one day - then died on the sandbar. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
DREW C. WILSON
The Virginian-Pilot
``I wanted so bad to see this whale. But now, I sort of wish I
hadn't,'' said Coast Guardsman Jeff Parker after wading out to touch
Freddy, the stranded fin whale. With each labored breath, it
thrashed its flippers and smacked its tail against the water.
by CNB