The weather conditions were picture perfect and the removal of a dead sperm whale from Frenchman’s Cove nearly went off without a hitch Thursday.
The whale carcass washed ashore on the rocky beach at the end of Salt Water Road a couple of weeks ago. Because it is within the municipal boundary of the Town of Humber Arm South, it was up to the municipality to move it if it didn’t want to just leave it there.
Related stories:
Humber Arm South looking into how to properly dispose of dead sperm whale in Frenchman's Cove
Springtime marine casualty as dead sperm whale washes ashore in Frenchman's Cove
The town devised a plan to transport the whale to John’s Beach and bury it above the high-tide mark before its decomposition was too advanced. The scheme was executed under a calm and sunny sky Thursday morning.
With heavy duty straps already tied around the cetacean’s tail, local fisherman Michael Hickey used his vessel, Gulf Pride, to pull the dead whale off the beach and into the water just after 9:30 a.m.
Hickey had no trouble getting the whale, estimated to be 40 feet long and weighing between 17 and 18 tonnes, into the water. However, halfway through the tow to Johns Beach — a distance of about seven kilometres — Hickey’s boat experienced mechanical trouble and couldn’t finish the job under its own power.
A second boat was dispatched and ended up towing both Hickey and the whale to the location chosen for the burial.
Pulled ashore by an excavator, the town used that piece of heavy equipment and a loader to position the mammoth body so it could be pushed into a deep grave freshly dug by the excavator.
Mayor Glenn Savard was happy to have the whale off the beach, where it was near some homes, and eliminate the risk of it floating back out into the ocean and making landfall somewhere else.
“I’m glad there’s no chance of it getting back out now, so it should be safe for the mariners to travel around the waters,” he said.
Lime was placed on the whale before it was buried in and more was placed on top of the soil to help the decomposition process and to discourage any curious wildlife from interfering with the site.
“I think what we’ll end up doing is some kind of procedure over the next couple pf years where we’ll come back and lime the area as a precautionary measure because we really don’t know,” said Savard. “We haven’t done this before.”
The mayor said the job to move the whale Thursday will likely cost the town around $10,000. He said that’s a lot of money, especially considering the town experienced a lot of infrastructure damage during heavy flooding in January.
He said there has been some talk in the community and some discussion among town council members about the prospect of someday exhuming the whale and possibly salvaging the bones as a tourist attraction.
Savard said any decision on that is still several years away and would likely have be made by some future elected town council. He said the location of the burial site will be identified to any future councils should they ever wish to consider that.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Savard. “It’s going to take a while for that (decomposition) process to take place, but you never know what the future is going to bring.”
Any plan to salvage all the bones of the whale has already been complicated by the fact someone has already cut away the toothed lower jaw of the sperm whale.
The town said it is not sure yet who is responsible for doing that.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has said it never removed any parts of this whale for sample testing.
Watch the video here
