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It’s been over 50 years since an experimental plan to dispose of a whale carcass on a beach in Oregon backfired in impressively disastrous fashion, and officials in the state have been forced to stress history will not repeat itself courtesy of a a viral post that claimed they were planning to harness a similar strategy later this month.
A number of whale species can be found roaming the Pacific Ocean off of the course of Oregon, and over the past few decades, an average of six of those animals have ended up washing ashore on beaches in the state each year (although that number has started to increase in recent years due to oceanic changes linked to climate change).
None of those aquatic mammals have come close to achieving the level of infamy obtained by a sperm whale that washed ashore in the town of Florence on November 9, 1970.
Officials working for the state’s Highway Division (which had authority over its beaches) decided the best way to dispose of the approximately 16,000 lb. animal was to fill the carcass with dynamite and let scavagers pick at the tiny pieces they assumed the explosion would create.
However, that did not turn out to be the case, as a car in a nearby parking lot was crushed by a massive chunk of blubber as spectators who gathered to watch the detonation were showered with chunks of its remnants.
As you can probably surmise, that was the last time that particular approach was used to dispose of a whale carcass in Oregon. However, that didn’t stop people from buying into a social media post that asserted officials were planning to go the same route at the end of June to address a humpback whale that washed up on a beach in Nehalem Bay State Park (around 80 miles west of Portland) in May.
On Wednesday, the Oregon State Parks Facebook page went out of its way to debunk the claim in a post featuring a picture of the carcass it’s content to let to continue to decompose while urging members of the public to avoid the area (which just so happens to be a protected snowy plover nesting ground).
I’d be lying if I said part of me didn’t want them to load the carcass up with a bunch of TNT, but based on what transpired the first time they tried it, I can understand why that’s not going to happen.