Found Whale
John Gluckman stands next to a dead humpback whale that washed up on the beach in Oswald West State Park near Cannon Beach. The whale's body spent three days on nearby Falcon Cove beach, but disappeared Monday before scientists could conduct a necropsy. Margit Bowler, an Astoria native, took the photograph.
(Margit Bowler)
The dead humpback whale that disappeared off an Oregon beach Monday before scientists could investigate its cause of death is back on a nearby beach today.
UPDATE: Here is a photo of the whale on Wednesday. It's still at Oswald West State Park, where beachgoers are being treated to glorious weather -- and the intense smell of decaying whale. Thanks to Tiffany Booth of the Seaside Aquarium for this new look at the whale's body.
The body of a once-majestic humpback whale lies on the beach at Oswald West State Park south of Cannon Beach, under glorious September skies. The beach is intended to be her final resting place after the Pacific Ocean deposited the body there Tuesday.
On Tuesday, two graduate students from the University of California at Los Angeles, Astoria native Margit Bowler and her boyfriend, John Gluckman, spied the now-famous whale during a visit to Oswald West State Park south of Cannon Beach, two miles south of where the body first was discovered. The humpback spent three days beached on nearby Falcon Cove beach near Arch Cape before it disappeared back out to sea.
Tiffany Booth, a member of the necropsy team from Seaside Aquarium who shared the news Monday that the whale's body was gone, had predicted it would wash back up somewhere in Oregon. Twenty-four hours later she has been proven correct.
Oregon Parks and Recreation officials say the high tides predicted over the next few weeks are not expected to be high enough to take it back out to sea, though it is still possible that could happen.
Since temperatures are relatively cool and the beach isn't crammed with visitors, they say they plan to leave the whale's body to decompose, rather than try to bury it. Scavengers and microorganisms will consume and recycle the tissue over the course of several weeks, they say.
Some researchers have federal permits to collect tissue from dead whales. Parks officials say all other visitors are encouraged to come see the humpback, but are not allowed to take any pieces and are discouraged from touching it. State park staff will be on the beach at 1 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday to present interpretive talks.
Humpback whales have the longest migration routes of any mammal. The ones that swim past Oregon travel 3,000 miles from breeding grounds to feeding grounds. Humpbacks, which are host to species of barnacles that only grow on whales, can live to be 100, Booth said.
The 38-foot-long whale that now graces a second beach in Oregon is a fully grown adult whose cause of death is not obvious to marine scientists who have seen it, Booth said.
Bowler, a Reed College graduate who took the photograph atop this article, has made headlines in Oregon before. She won a prestigious Fulbright fellowship to study language abroad, specifically the Australian indigenous language Warlpiri.
-- Betsy Hammond