A six-metre humpback whale has been loaded onto a truck after dying when it became stranded in a port in Uruguay.
The huge whale was removed from the water in Montevideo on Friday after being in the throes of death for three days in Buceo port.
Inquisitive locals looked on as the carcass was lifted out of the port with the help of a crane and loaded onto a truck.
It will be taken to the Montevideo dump for disposal, provincial emergency services chief Jorge Cuello said.
Health risk
A decomposing whale can be a public health risk and because of a build up of natural gases dead whales can explode.
First a postmortem will be carried out to determine why it died. A necropsy allows scientific researchers access to tissues and material that would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible to obtain.
Alberto Ponce de Leon, the head of the national water directorate’s marine mammals department, told EFE that when the whale first ran aground it was too ill to be moved.
The average size of a humpback whale is 14.6 to 19 metres – around the size of a bus – and they can weigh 40 tons.
Why whales get stranded
The mammals swim in pods and are known for their ‘songs’ which travel for great distances across oceans.
Humpback whales can live for 80-90 years in the wild but sometimes find themselves stranded or beached.
Injuries from boats, water pollution, confusion from man-made sonar technology and natural disease can all cause them to get stuck in shallow water.