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A 42-foot fin whale is stuck on Stinson Beach, Monday, August 19, 2013. The whale was alive when discovered early in the morning, but died before it could be moved to safety: photo by Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal
Heathcote Williams: Whale Song
From space, the planet is blue.
From space, the planet is the territory
Not of humans, but of the whale.
Blue seas cover seven-tenths of the earth’s surface,
And are the domain of the largest brain ever created,
With a fifty-million-year-old smile.
Ancient, unknown mammals left the land
In search of food or sanctuary,
And walked into the water.
Their arms and hands changed into water-wings;
Their tails turned into boomerang-shaped tail-flukes,
Enabling them to fly, almost weightless, through the oceans;
Their hind-legs disappeared, buried deep within their flanks.
Free from land-based pressures:
Free from droughts, earthquakes, ice-ages, volcanoes, famine,
Larger brains evolved, ten times as old as man’s…
Other creatures, with a larger cerebral cortex…
…
Whale families, whale tribes,
All have different songs:
An acoustic picture-language,
Spirited pulses relayed through water
At five times the speed sounds travels through air,
Varied enough to express complex emotions,
Cultural details,
History,
News,
A sense of the unknown.
A lone Humpback may put on a solo concert lasting for days.
Within a Humpback’s half-hour song
There are a hundred million bytes.
A million changes of frequency,
And a million tonal twists…
An Odyssey, as information-packed as Homer’s,
Can be told in thirty minutes;
Fifty-million-year-old sagas of continuous whale mind:
Accounts of the forces of nature;
The minutiae of a shared consciousness;
Whale dreams;
The accumulated knowledge of the past;
Rumours of ancestors, the Archaeoceti,
With life-spans of two and three hundred years;
Memories of loss;
Memories of ideal love;
Memories of meetings…
Heathcote Williams: from Whale Nation, 1988
Protected whales: Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus): Edward Fugiø, Faroe islands postal stamp, 17 September 2001; image by Arne List, 18 October 2005
A fin whale thrashes its tail as it tries in vain to get off the sand on Monday, August 19, 2013, in Stinson Beach, California. After this last attempt, the whale died: photo by Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal
A fin whale thrashes its tail as it tries in vain to get off the sand on Monday, August 19, 2013, in Stinson Beach, California. After this last attempt, the whale died: photo by Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal
A fin whale lies stuck in the sand on Monday, August 19, 2013, in Stinson Beach, California. After a last attempt to free itself, the whale died: photo by Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal
A juvenile fin whale, approximately 40-50 ft in length, washed ashore at Stinson Beach in Marin County today, August 19, 2013. A call was received from a volunteer at around 7 a.m. this morning and The Marine Mammal Center assembled and dispatched a veterinary team to investigate. Sadly, the whale was found dead upon arrival.
The veterinary team has since performed a necropsy (animal autopsy) to try to determine the cause of death. Once the whale was rolled over, The Marine Mammal Center's Director of Veterinary Science, Dr. Shawn Johnson, discovered trauma to the sternum area and internal hemorrhaging around the heart. In addition, air was present in the subcutaneous tissue -- tissue between the muscle and fat -- indicative of trauma. There were no broken bones discovered.
Further studies will be conducted, including histopathology testing -- microscopic examination of tissue samples. At this time we can't conclusively say what caused this animal's death, but hope to determine this in the near future.
The whale has now been buried at Stinson Beach by the National Park Service.
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In 2012 a fin whale measuring approximately 47 feet in length washed ashore at Point Reyes. Dr. Frances Gulland, Senior Scientist at The Marine Mammal Center, along with Research Associate Lauren Rust, and National Park Service scientist, Sarah Allen, examined the whale and completed the necropsy. They found that the whale had external wounds as well as trauma resulting in fractured ribs and vertebra, and had died as a result of a ship strike.
In 2010, the carcass of a fin whale washed ashore at Ocean Beach in San Francisco and a necropsy determined the cause of death in that case to be from a ship strike as well.
Fin whales are the second largest marine mammal on earth, next to blue whales, and belong to the family of baleen whales. Also called razorback whales, fin whales are federally listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Their only know predator, excluding humans, is the killer whale.
Threats include: historically, commercial whaling; collisions with vessels; entanglement in fishing gear; reduced prey abundance due to overfishing; habitat degradation; disturbance from low-frequency noise.
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Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus), Ligurian Sea. Showing distinctive asymmetric coloration: photo by Tim Stenton, 8 July 2006
The veterinary team has since performed a necropsy (animal autopsy) to try to determine the cause of death. Once the whale was rolled over, The Marine Mammal Center's Director of Veterinary Science, Dr. Shawn Johnson, discovered trauma to the sternum area and internal hemorrhaging around the heart. In addition, air was present in the subcutaneous tissue -- tissue between the muscle and fat -- indicative of trauma. There were no broken bones discovered.
Further studies will be conducted, including histopathology testing -- microscopic examination of tissue samples. At this time we can't conclusively say what caused this animal's death, but hope to determine this in the near future.
The whale has now been buried at Stinson Beach by the National Park Service.
__
In 2012 a fin whale measuring approximately 47 feet in length washed ashore at Point Reyes. Dr. Frances Gulland, Senior Scientist at The Marine Mammal Center, along with Research Associate Lauren Rust, and National Park Service scientist, Sarah Allen, examined the whale and completed the necropsy. They found that the whale had external wounds as well as trauma resulting in fractured ribs and vertebra, and had died as a result of a ship strike.
In 2010, the carcass of a fin whale washed ashore at Ocean Beach in San Francisco and a necropsy determined the cause of death in that case to be from a ship strike as well.
Fin whales are the second largest marine mammal on earth, next to blue whales, and belong to the family of baleen whales. Also called razorback whales, fin whales are federally listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Their only know predator, excluding humans, is the killer whale.
Threats include: historically, commercial whaling; collisions with vessels; entanglement in fishing gear; reduced prey abundance due to overfishing; habitat degradation; disturbance from low-frequency noise.
A Juvenile Fin Whale Strands at Stinson Beach: The Marine Mammal Center, 19 August 2013
Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus), Ligurian Sea. Showing distinctive asymmetric coloration: photo by Tim Stenton, 8 July 2006