THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 10, 1996 TAG: 9602100265
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Although several people have offered to do the job, fisheries officials said they don't plan to blow up the 40-ton fin whale who died on a sandbar off this Outer Banks inlet this week.
Marine mammal stranding experts were still considering myriad options for disposing of the 40-foot animal. But Friday afternoon, the black body of the fin whale Coast Guardsmen dubbed ``Freddy'' was still stuck in 3 feet of water in the Pamlico Sound. Biologists say they probably won't try to move the whale until Sunday at the earliest.
``We've had calls from an awful lot of ammunition-happy people who want to cart that whale offshore and blow it up,'' said National Marine Fisheries Service spokeswoman Vicky Thayer, who oversees North Carolina's Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
``One guy said he had 40,000 tons of dynamite that might do the trick. But that's not an option,'' Thayer said Friday. ``We're not even considering that as a possibility for disposal.
``Trying to blow up that big whale would just make an even bigger mess.''
Frank Hudgins, curator at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, agreed. ``They blew up a whale on a California beach a few years back - right on the beach,'' Hudgins said. ``Pieces of blubber flew everywhere, crushing cars all over the nearby roads. I don't think that's really the best plan.''
Freddy the fin whale became stranded Monday after swimming through Oregon Inlet and somehow moving out of the deep-water channel. It ended up stuck on its stomach about 2 1/2 miles west of the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge to Hatteras Island, about 150 yards outside the channel. The animal struggled to free itself for three days before finally dying late Wednesday or early Thursday.
Although well-wishers from across the East Coast called in dozens of ideas for rescuing the whale, biologists said nothing could be done to save it. Trying to tow it would have injured the animal, they said. The whale was too heavy to airlift, and it was too far from the channel to dig it a path out to sea.
Besides, many scientists said, that whale must have had something wrong with it to begin with or it never would have ended up in such shallow water so far away from the ocean.
``I think they did everything they could for it,'' Coast Guardsman Jeff Scheck said from his Oregon Inlet station Friday.
Marine mammal experts hope to dissect the fin whale, which they estimate was between 3 and 5 years old, to try to determine if it was sick, or why it swam to shore.
``Now, we're looking at trying to tow it onto land somewhere so we can do a necropsy on it,'' Thayer said. ``We'll use a Coast Guard boat to tow it. And we'll have to have a long stretch of beach to put it on and some heavy equipment to haul that animal onto shore.''
If the National Marine Fisheries Service can find a place to put the whale, Thayer said, biologists will examine it and extract bones, tissues and organs. Then they'll either try to bury the animal on the beach or tow it back off shore to deep water for a burial at sea.
``Eventually, we'd like to just let the whale decay naturally in the ocean,'' said Thayer. ``Let fish eat it. Let it become part of the food chain again.''
Scheck said the public is prohibited from touching or even approaching the animal.
In two or three days, biologists say, the whale's carcass will begin to bloat as its massive body fills with [fill with] gas. Then, it probably will float - and could become a hazard to navigation.
On Friday, however, Scheck said the fin whale was still stuck on the same sandbar where it spent its last days.on the bottom of the sound.
Coast Guard crews marked the animal's location with a white buoy.
KEYWORDS: BEACHED WHALE by CNB