Motorists travelling on Highway 101 near Gold Beach in southern Oregon on Monday were met with a surprising sight: a 78-foot (24-metre) blue whale carcass stretched across the beach.
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The massive marine mammal is very rare in Oregon, a state natural resources specialist said.
The rare whale turned up on Ophir Beach, north of Gold Beach. “They are not even on our radar for Whale Watch because they are so uncommon”. Most of the whales Mate has been tracking for the past two years have not been doing well.
“The blubber layer was emaciated – four inches or less”, Mr Stevenson told the Daily Mail, explaining that a healthy blue whale should have up to 30cm of blubber.
Stevenson said one theory is that the whale may have been weakened by El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
Stevenson said that the male might have been battered by storms before ocean predators finished the job.
Workers have been cutting and peeling back layers of blubber from the skeleton, and had removed most of it by Friday. Bruce Mate, marine mammal director at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, who has been conducting research in the state since 1968, claims this is the first time that he has witnessed a blue whale washed up on an Oregon beach.
The whale’s skeleton will be taken to the Hatfield center in Newport, where it will be cleaned and hopefully put on display, Havel said.
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Speaking from the beach where the whale washed up, Mate said the environment may have also played a role.
