One morning while we were at the beach, a whale washed up on the shore close to where we usually staked out down by the water. We all hurried out to view this creature before breakfast. They determined it was a False Killer Whale, and a female. She was alive when she washed ashore, but they said she was in pretty bad shape and euthanized her. They estimated her to be about 1200 lbs, and she was about 13 feet long. We got good looks at her, and we took some pictures. Supposedly this is only the second time this has happened this far north, and these whales usually are more south in the tropics near the equator. Also, they are not normally seen close to shore, usually they are only seen from a boat in the open ocean. They don’t know what happened that this whale came ashore.
A team of researchers from a university 5 hours away came and performed a necropsy (an autopsy). They took samples of different tissues, and put the whale’s head in a cooler to take away. The skeleton was sent to the Smithsonian. Later in the evening, we went down to the whale spot again and saw her in many piles and pieces. They said they were going to bury the remains.
I have included some pictures we took, but I didn’t include any of the “piles and pieces”. They might contain too much “gory content” for those with weak stomachs. Besides, the whale looks much better in these “before” pictures.
It looks like you all did have a “Whale of a time” at the beach!! How exciting to get to see a whale!! It sounds like you guys had a great vacation and the pictures are great! I love looking at them all!