A large excavator has started digging up an 18-tonne humpback whale that was buried at a mid-northern New South Wales beach a week ago.
The 12-metre whale died after being beached and its carcass was buried at Port Macquarie’s Nobbys beach because it was too big to be moved.
Port Macquarie-Hastings council started the exhumation on Monday morning, with hopes to have the whale and any contaminated sand removed by the end of the day.
“We are using an excavator with big teeth on its bucket to actually cut the whale in pieces,” the council’s development and environment director, Matt Rogers, said on Monday. “It’s going as smoothly as expected.”
The council decided to remove the whale because of community concerns about heightened shark activity.
Within two days of being beached last Sunday, the carcass had attracted 21 great white shark movements, a spokesman for the Port Macquarie Marine Rescue service, Geoff Shelton, said.
Chunks of whale being hauled up from Nobbys Beach in Port Macquarie! #zombiewhale @triplejHack pic.twitter.com/FC14VdVKfB
— Gabrielle Lyons (@gj_lyons) September 25, 2017
But Rogers said the council had not made a mistake in deciding to bury the whale and he did not agree it would attract sharks.
“There’s no admission of mistakes being made,” he said. “[We] responded to concerns raised.”
The state government has paid $50,000 towards the exhumation process. Council workers and contractors are using a large excavator and 220-tonne crane to remove the whale in pieces.
After the carcass has been loaded into lined skip bins, a crane will lift it up the beach escarpment, from where it will be taken to a specially built cell at a nearby tip.
Nobbys beach will remain closed until the whale and any contaminated sand is removed.
