Rarely beached

Danette Goulet

It may be the largest thing to have hit Huntington city beaches in the

last three decades.

But the efficient burial of a decaying 45- to 50-foot Fin or Sei

Whale, which washed up on dog beach last week, meant a scientific loss

for marine biologists and researchers who would have studied the deep-sea

dweller.

“We’re disappointed because of the information that was lost,” said

Joe Cordaro, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries

Service in Long Beach. “We understand that the city has a responsibility

to keep a clean beach and hopefully in the future we can be more clear.”

It was miscommunication that kept scientists from studying what may

have been a rare species to Southern California’s waters, scientists

said.

John Heyning, the deputy director of research and collections for the

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and his team arrived Friday

morning to find the whale already buried in the sand.

From pictures of the stranded mammal, Heyning was able only to

determine that it was not a Blue Whale as lifeguards had supposed, but

either a Fin or a Sei whale, both of which are related to the Blue Whale

and members of the Baleen Opterid family, he said.

“Fin or Sei whales are very close relatives to the Blue -- smaller

cousins,” Heyning said. “The shape of the head is very distinctive on the

Blue Whale. It is rounded where for the Fin, Sei and all the rest are

pointed. We get fin whales once or twice a decade in Southern California

waters, the majority of which are struck by ships. There has never been a

record of a Sei whale in Southern California’s waters.”

Of the many things Cordaro and Heyning wished to have learned from the

remains the most important was species, which to Cordaro’s dismay will

have to be officially listed as “unidentified Baleen Opterid.”

“Well we definitely could have identified the species, sex, length and

determined absolutely whether a ship strike was the cause of death or if

that happened after death,” Heyning said. “It’s just unfortunate that we

didn’t get to learn more from this one.”

Both organizations are interested in determining what species are in

the waters off Southern California’s coast and at what time.

It is Cordaro’s job to keep track of the number of marine mammals that

wash up on shore. The museum has a permit from the National Marine

Fishery Service to collect parts and examine those finds.

“We’re interested in the biology of whales and whatever we can glean

from a dead stranded whale and cause of any whales death, especially if

it seems to be caused by humans,” Heyning said. “We can get a better

understanding of human impacts.”

These facts will all remain unknown however.

Within hours of the whale washing ashore about 150 yards from

lifeguard tower 22, the city’s beach maintenance crew had used its

largest tractor to roll the whale south of Goldenwest Street and buried

it 10 feet underfoot.

“We have some people we contact and we try to do that, but our main

goal is to get rid of the animal, to bury or remove it from the scene,”

said city lifeguard chief Steve Seim. “This one was so big, I’ve been

here since 1968 and it looks like it was bigger than anything I’ve seen.

We do like to get these people who like to come out and look at the

whale, but by the time he got here it was dark and the area was real

close to homes -- not pleasant and you could smell it across the

highway.”

The decomposing whale, which was first reported by boat crews, was

sighted offshore just before 4 p.m., Seim said.

A state lifeguard boat went out and threw a rope around it and

attempted to pull it back out to sea, but to no avail, he said.

When it finally hit shore at about 6:30 p.m. it was not a surprise.

When there are strandings the beach maintenance crew uses a tractor to

dig down 10-feet, which is as far as the tractor will go, and bury the

remains.

“Since it was in an area down by the bluffs [beach maintenance crews]

took the fork part of the truck [and] rolled it south,” Seims said.

“Since it was so big they rolled the middle then rolled one end then

rolled the other end. And the tractor was lifting up as they rolled it.”

Although an animal of this size washing up in Huntington Beach is

rare, marine life washing up is not.

“We get some kind of stranding every other week,” Seim said. “We’ll go

through a pattern where we’ll get a couple, two or three, a week then we

won’t get any for a month.”

“There are whales and whale parts and large sea lions in and along

this beach,” he added.

In the last three years, about 150 whales and dolphins have washed up

on California’s shores each year and thousands of seals and sea lions

roll in, each year, according to the National Wildlife Fishery Services.

The last record of an unidentified Baleen Opterid washing up in

California was in 1997.

The last recorded Fin Whale to wash up was in 1996.

Heyning hopes to gather more photos from curious residents and

passersby who snapped them to learn more about the creature.