Farewell to Wally--Dead Humpback Whale will Plague Dana Point, Coastline no More

DANA POINT, CA—It was just a week ago that a stubborn, putrid whale carcass drifted into Dana Point, just a short time after the same dead whale visited Newport Beach, and Dockweiler State Beach before that.

Today, authorities in Leucadia, California solved the problem with what to do about it. Get it off the beach, however they can.

Hauling the 45-foot-long humpback whale carcass offshore into drifting currents wasn't working.

Affectionately called 'Wally'--though the whale reportedly was female--the Orange County Sheriff's Department recorded their last attempt to drag the whale out to sea and away from Dana Point.

Today, in Leucadia, authorities solved a stubborn and putrid problem Monday. They removed the badly decomposed carcass of a humpback whale from a stretch of ocean shoreline with the unenviable task of removing the whale from the beach once and for all.

Lifeguards and a contractor crew cut the roughly 45-foot-long dead cetacean into three sections and loaded them into a large trash bin via a backhoe and a front-end loader, getting the remains off of Grandview Beach and en route to Miramar Landfill by about 9:30 a.m.

"Wally the Whale," as the carcass came to be known, first washed ashore in Los Angeles about two weeks ago, and prior attempts at towing it out to sea ended with it drifting back onto Southern California beaches. It came ashore the final time near the foot of Neptune Avenue late Saturday afternoon.

Last Wednesday, sheriff's deputies in Dana Point spent several hours towing the dead whale back out to sea after it drifted toward shore. It previously had washed up in Newport Beach and at Dockweiler State Beach in Los Angeles County.

On Sunday, an attempt to remove the roughly 22-ton carcass failed when two tires on a piece of heavy equipment popped under its weight, Encinitas lifeguard Capt. Larry Giles said.

The cause of the giant sea mammal's death was unknown, according to Giles.

— City News Service
(Photo courtesy Orange County Sheriff's Department)