THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 21, 1996 TAG: 9602210427
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: Short : 26 lines
The body of a 40-foot fin whale that died in this Outer Banks inlet Feb. 9 is still stuck on the same sandbar it washed ashore on more than two weeks ago.
Officials say they can't move the 40-ton whale that Coast Guardsmen dubbed ``Freddy'' until its big body begins to fill with gas and float. Cold water and air temperatures have acted as a refrigerator to preserve the animal. The whale is in about three feet of water, about 150 yards outside the deep channel, 2.5 miles west of the Oregon Inlet bridge in the Pamlico Sound.
Once the whale begins to float, marine mammal experts hope to tow it to the Navy's Dam Neck training center in Virginia Beach so they can do a necropsy - animal autopsy - on the fin whale. In the meantime, Coast Guardsmen have anchored the animal to the bottom of the sound and marked its location with a white buoy. They say its body poses no hazard to navigation. by CNB