Cape Life: happiness is a dead whale....

for me, anyway ??? grotesque, i know.

i was riding high after last wednesday's successful dolphin rescue when i headed into work at the stranding network on thursday. i was at the warehouse cleaning up the previous day's mess from all the mud and bloody dolphins when we got a call about THE WHALE. a large whale had stranded in eastham and was wedged in the ice. we threw our supplies in the trucks, loaded up the flatbed trailer and were on our way. we got to the beach just in time to watch the whale take it's last breath. it thrust it's flukes up in the air in an effort to free itself and looked at us with it's large eyes desperate for help....but really there was nothing we could do. the beach was on private property and they owners did not want to have large machinery in their yard. it was also a snowy morning, so all the large trucks from the DNR were being used for salting the roads, so there was no large machinery available anyway. if they were to have euthanized the animal, they would have had to move it right away due to laws about that...which was out of the question....so it is for the best that the whale died on its own. the thought was that it was the same whale that was swimming in wellfleet harbor the prior day, so that was a little disheartening, because we thought that it had swam back to safety. it was a beautiful animal, and i must admit it was a rush to be next to (& on top off at one point) such a large creature in the wild, even if it was dead. we headed back to the trucks and put on dry suits (a task in itself!) & went to work trying to remove the snow and ice from around the whale to get some blood and also some level A data (measurements, etc.). there is a great picture in the cape cod times of me & ct in dry suits digging out bloody slush from around the animal (someones gotta do it)....so check it out! i'm the one of the left: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090206/NEWS/902060322 there is also a photo gallery link if you scroll down a bit to the right, that has some great pictures of everyone working on the animal.
because the animal was lodged in the ice, the stranding network team decided that they would wait until the weekend when the weather was suppose to warm up to try and move the animal to do a necropsy. i was a little sad, because i was not going to be around during the weekend (as i was having a belated birthday celebration in rhode island!) but knew that they needed to do what was best for the whale. WELL....lucky for me (?), the weather didn't warm up and they planned to move the whale on monday and necropsy it on tuesday, so i would get to help! well...tuesday turned into wednesday and then into thursday -- TODAY! we attempted to move the whale on tuesday by pulling it out with a small boat, but the 40 ft. whale wouldn't budge! on wednesday, with the help of another boat and a full moon tide they successful moved the whale to first encounter beach and it was all set for a necropsy today.
i arrived at the beach at 7 am and got into my necropsy gear. there was a huge crane and 2 bulldozer-type machines to help move the different pieces of the whale once we cut it up. i was assigned the task of "additional cutter" -- and i was super nervous! the only thing i have cut (besides fetal pigs and a dead cat during school) were some dolphin intestines....so helping with a whole whale seemed pretty daunting. my boss, katie, told me to grab a knife and be aggressive and get in there, but i was apprehensive and started by using a meat hook to peel back blubber and skin for others to cut. it was by luck that somone left the whale for a second and left their KNIFE right in front of me. they needed help cutting out the ribs, so i took that as my chance to cut and I CUT OUT A WHALE RIB! i was very proud of myself....& it was pretty awesome, to say the least. i then ended up cutting out a lot of muscle in the peduncle part (or tail stalk). the coolest (?) thing was that they found worms in the kidneys....& when i say worms, i mean they needed to get buckets to transfer these massive things to the samlping station. it was actually pretty gross, but it's amazing what you can find in these animals, or just in bodies in general. this is where my love of disection stems from....not just that i am morbid and enjoy playing with dead things. anyway....we were racing against the tide to get the whale dismembered and buried....but we won, and may the fin whale now rest in peace at first encounter beach under the sand. it was such an experience, i could have not asked for a cooler thing to be a part of. i feel very fortunate!

attempting to move the whale on tuesday....