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Blue Whale Carcass Proving Hard To Remove

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Oct 27, 2009 4:39 pm US/Pacific

Blue Whale Carcass Proving Hard To Remove

 Environment & The Green Beat

FORT BRAGG (CBS 5 / AP) ― A team of scientists, volunteers and students are enduring the overwhelming stench from a rotting whale carcass as they work to remove it from a Mendocino County beach.

The body of an 80-ton, 72-foot blue whale washed ashore Oct. 19 near Fort Bragg. The animal was mortally wounded when it tried to surface under an ocean survey vessel.

On Tuesday, workers cut into the carcass so they could remove the pieces and bury them for decomposition. Humboldt State University professors also have been collecting tissue, organs and fluids from the animal, a federally protected species, for research.

Once the body is decomposed, researchers hope to salvage the skeleton so it can someday be displayed in Fort Bragg.

The whales are "usually far offshore, deep water animals," Cordaro said.

Although blue whales are considered endangered, experts say they have recently made a comeback and now number several thousand.

Some blue whales feed in the waters off Central and Northern California this time of year then migrate elsewhere to breed, said Dawn Goley, an associate professor of zoology at the Humboldt campus.

Researchers have taken skin and blubber samples from the beached animal to see what contaminants it may have been exposed to and what population group it comes from.

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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