Sometimes, a whale dies.

December 10, 2015 8:55 AM

One of the most beautiful, amazing, and depressing things I’ve ever done is participate in a whale necropsy. This work helps us understand the patterns of whale mortality, and determine whether whale deaths are natural, or possibly man-made. This is important stuff. In fact, their work has helped guide changes in policy, especially when it comes to designing the shipping lanes that go into and out of San Francisco Bay. Their research helped establish new, longer, and narrower shipping lanes that reduced the chances of ships hitting, and often killing, whales. This work saved whales’ lives.

Whale necropsies are also important for advancing our understanding of whale anatomy and therefore our understanding of whales themselves. Famously, Inside Nature's Giants (previously: 1, 2) illustrated just how much enthusiastic whale biologists can learn from a thorough study of whale anatomy. When a whale corpse washes up on the beach, it's important to mobilize the scientific community as quickly as possible.

Of course, whale necropsies need to happen quickly for other reasons. The stink of a rotting whale corpse is legendary. Worse, whale bodies have been known to explode under pressure. At least there are no sharks involved in beached whale body dissections.

posted by sciatrix (17 comments total)

Whale necropsy emergency response mobilization and networking? Oh sciatrix, you should know the way into my heart.
posted by barchan at 9:00 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

*waggles eyebrows* Dead only-slightly-rotten whales for everyone today!
posted by sciatrix at 9:00 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

In fact, their work has helped guide changes in policy, especially when it comes to designing the shipping lanes that go into and out of San Francisco Bay. Their research helped establish new, longer, and narrower shipping lanes that reduced the chances of ships hitting, and often killing, whales. This work saved whales’ lives.

cetacean needed
posted by hal9k at 9:01 AM on December 10, 2015 [31 favorites]

I WANT TO DO A WHALE NECROPSY!

I had an internship in college in a zoo, and where I worked was right next to the necropsy room. I came into work one day and they were necropsying a zebra nextdoor, and this was a VERY IMPRESSIVE PROCESS with lots of blood and dissection techniques and stuff so I watched for a bit and then got down to work. My boss, who did a lot of work with species survival plans for captive breeding and the like, called someone up and I sort of half listened to her conversation. "Oh, OK, yeah, I guess he's fathered three or four foals already? Alright, I guess that means I can take the zebra sperm out of my bra."

At which point I gave her a kind of startled look and sure enough, she was pulling a vial of what was apparently zebra sperm out of her bra. She wanted to keep them warm before they decided whether or not they needed to cryogenically freeze them, apparently, and bras are a warmer place to store sperm than pockets.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:06 AM on December 10, 2015 [21 favorites]

Those pics in the Medium article were beautiful and did a good job of capturing the beauty and love the writer referred to behind this unpleasant task.

ChuraChura, I've hinted several times to colleagues at Scripps that I'd happily volunteer for a whale necropsy, but have never been called. Probably because I donkey laughed at them dealing with whale feces live in the middle of the continent.

Sadly the warm waters the current El Nino is pushing around the Pacific sounds like it's going to give scientists more opportunities to do this as El Ninos may affect whale deaths.
posted by barchan at 9:28 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sure, a whale necropsy sounds fascinating, but how are you going to dispose of the carcass afterwards? Fortunately, the Internet has an answer.

Also? Metafilter: a warmer place to store sperm than pockets.
posted by The Tensor at 9:46 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you liked this, don't miss the similar story Whale Fall by Rebecca Giggs (posted a few days ago) – it's a fantastic piece of creative nonfiction.
posted by oulipian at 10:03 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

I missed that, oulipian, thanks!
posted by barchan at 10:06 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

ChuraChura: She wanted to keep them warm before they decided whether or not they needed to cryogenically freeze them, apparently, and bras are a warmer place to store sperm than pockets.

It's advisable to buy the next largest cup size, just in case of a zebra jizz scenario.
posted by dr_dank at 10:11 AM on December 10, 2015

side note, yo: jonathan foley (who wrote the piece and took the photos) just took over the california academy of sciences in 2014, but is best known for his landmark work on "the challenge of feeding a projected population of nine billion people by 2050," ... which led to a huge cover story in national geographic. remarkable scientist.
posted by buffalo at 10:35 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

They were also taking samples, to bring back to the Cal Academy collection vaults. Tissues, organs, bones, and so on. This will become part of the permanent collection of the Academy, and be preserved for scientific study indefinitely into the future.

I am glad and relieved to hear this. Last weekend, I visited a specimen prep room at a small natural science museum, and talked with a couple of students who are back-cataloging the (many!) holdings stuck in various drawers--including the blown-out eggs of an ivory-billed woodpecker, and of a passenger pigeon. Amazing. Thanks for this article, sciatrix!
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:47 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am one of these people. I have been fortunate (and yes I do mean that) enough to participate in dozens of marine animal necropsies, including two large whales. All as an unpaid volunteer. Love is definitely one of the reasons to spend a day covered in decaying animal trying to find out what happened. Passion and drive to do something are others. Some of the more devastating ones are what we call HI cases, Human Interaction. Where you see the healed chafe marks from the rope that was wrapped around the fins for who knows how long before it finally fell off, or the scars from propeller strikes, plastic bags in the GI tract - and often those aren't the things that killed the animal, just things it was trying to survive before it got hit by that boat, or ended up with that infection. It's upsetting when you think about pollution and the impact or fisheries on marine life in an abstract sense; its absolutely heartbreaking when you see in the flesh that we as a species are killing these giant majestic creatures that are just trying to live in a world overrun by human stuff.

And yes, the stench is unbelievable. It's not just the clothes, its like it clings on to your nose hairs for days. All you can smell is dead whale. The phone call before I get home from a day volunteering goes something like: "Honey, don't touch me when I get home, I'm dead. And make sure there's a clear path to the shower..."
posted by danapiper at 11:04 AM on December 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

How much of an outlier is the 337 whale die off along the coast of Chile earlier this month?

...because 337 feels like a large number when it comes to whales.
posted by lucidprose at 1:45 PM on December 10, 2015

That was a lovely article, sciatrix, thanks. I was a bit nervous about clicking through and seeing the pictures, but it is strange how the black and white takes the horror out of them and just turns it into something sad and oddly beautiful.
posted by Athanassiel at 4:36 PM on December 10, 2015

That medium piece was fascinating. Thanks for that.

I couldn't help but be reminded of this story - apparently they wanted to bring in the experts, but the good townsfolk of Lamaline, Newfoundland were left to deal with it themselves:

Beached whale carcass falls apart during move:

According to Mayor Maureen Flemming, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Newfoundland and Labrador Government advised the town it was on its own for disposing of the whale.

And yeah, the link contains video of the move gone...well, not smoothly:

An average adult humpback whale is anywhere from 13 to 19 metres long, and weigh 39,000 kilograms.

"I was hoping it was going to haul where it was so slippery, he had no other choice but to come," he said.

"[But] the chain kept busting and the strap busted, so [I tore] him apart."

Pike used the excavator to tear the whale carcass into pieces to gradually drag it to its final resting place.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:53 PM on December 15, 2015

I will probably never have reason to participate in a whale necropsy, and I am suddenly realizing this may mean my education took a wrong turn somewhere.

Wait a second, I bet whale brains are useful to look at in necropsy! All is not lost!
posted by biogeo at 7:30 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will probably never have reason to participate in a whale necropsy, and I am suddenly realizing this may mean my education took a wrong turn somewhere.

As an adult, I have now processed a number of chickens and turkeys, and have helped/and or been present for the skinning and gutting of a pig, and the taking apart of deer, and I have the overwhelming urge to send an email to my sixth grade biology teacher, apologizing for not being able to dissect a frog back then. Skin and feathers: beautiful. Innards: also beautiful, though in a much different way, having to do with precision and functionality and order.

danapiper, thanks for doing the work that you do, and thanks for sharing it here.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:45 PM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]