Humpbacked whale washed up at Weston
East Devon Education Ranger James Chubb gets active in the countryside
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| • FIZZING JELLY: The whale was in advance state of decompostion, only the pectoral fins were intact. Pic: James Chubb. |
1-3-2007
My last few articles written for the Journal have caused your editor some sleepless nights I fear, as they have been a little last minute to say the least.
With so much going on, it’s been hard to find a gap in my schedule to sit down and put something together, let alone actually visit the countryside myself and risk being away from the office for an hour or two!
So I thought I would be conscientious this week and submit my piece in plenty of time. Last time I was this punctual the MSC Napoli arrived the following day and messed up the schedule! I quipped prophetically in my email: ‘Hope nothing happens this time.’
Of course, it did.
The following day I got a call from my friend Gavin Black at the Devon Biodiversity Records Centre in Exeter.
“I’ve had a report of a humpback whale washed ashore on Weston beach, and wondered if you could give me a hand getting some samples of it for the Zoological Society?” Gavin asked.
The vision I had in my head was probably similar to yours now. A majestic humpback, lying stranded on the beach, towering above slack-jawed onlookers.
“No problems,” I said. “I’ll meet you in the car park in an hour.”
The sight that greeted us when we eventually found the carcass was a very different matter, however, and starkly different to what was originally reported.
Firstly, Gavin and I set off in the wrong direction to find the whale and ended up walking for miles and miles before we entered the correct bay in which the whale was located. That was our fault for not having a firm location report. Secondly, it took me at least a minute, with careful direction from Gavin, before I could identify the huge pink blob of slightly fizzing pink jelly as, indeed, a humpback.
As the picture shows, it was entirely stripped of skin, and in such an advanced state of decomposition that on the outside it really didn’t even smell too much. There were no gulls feeding on the carcass, nor were there any flies buzzing about.
So Gavin and I donned protective suits, gloves and goggles and made the first measurements. At just over seven metres in length the whale was bigger than it appeared.
Being so decomposed meant that it had long since ‘deflated’ and was no longer a rounded body shape.
The only elements that had not changed out of all recognition were the pectoral fins, which maintained their characteristic scalloped edge and even had a gigantic barnacle on one.
The measuring over, we then needed to provide samples of tissue for testing, a procedure which might explain cause of death. I drew the short straw and got the task of removing blubber and, if possible, musculature too.
The blubber was fine, whales are so copiously covered in thick pink fat, and, with the skin already gone, the sample was quickly bagged. Getting a muscle sample was a completely different story and a little too grisly to go into, suffice to say I was glad to be wearing eye protection.
But the point is that the chances of this animal being a direct casualty of the Napoli grounding are miniscule. Not zero, but not far from it. We won’t be able to say categorically until toxicological results are back from the Zoological Society, but this looks to be a very unhappy coincidence.
According to Gavin, who collects all records of whales and dolphins seen off the Devon coast, February is normally a very quiet month for stranding sightings. This doesn’t mean that strandings aren’t taking place, it’s just that there are so many people out there beach combing this year, that the DBRC are getting to hear about them.
This is no bad thing, because it means we have access to a much more complete set of data, which can be used as a bench mark for future study.
I worry that if inaccurate conclusions about big, impressive, headline-grabbing stories of the Napoli’s wildlife impact keep being drawn, we might overlook or underplay her true legacy. What this unfolding drama illustrates is how dangerous our “out of site, out of mind” attitude to marine conservation is.
If anything positive is to come from the heightened public awareness of maritime conservation, it will be that further progress is made at a political level to make our waters safer for people, and for wildlife.
Huge steps forward have already been taken with inshore water quality, but that is more for bathing convenience and tourism than for species protection. There’s no beach on Earth that doesn’t host an amount of alien plastics, no sea without hazardous human flotsam.
Supporting conservation charities like WWF funds conservation work across the planet. However, some people prefer to support work a little closer to home and are members of their county Wildlife Trust, while others prefer to get out, roll their sleeves up and make a difference to their immediate environment.
If you fall into this last group, you are probably one of many East Devon residents, myself included, who are desperate to get stuck in with helping to clean our beaches.
Please do not lose heart. As soon as it is possible to involve volunteers I am ready and waiting, health and safety policy documentation in hand, to mobilise an army of volunteers to beaches throughout the district. And, as a Journal reader, you will be one of the first to hear about it.
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