Blue whale washes up on NZ coast

Now that's GOT to stink. I wonder if the Kiwi's will apply the http://www.theexplodingwhale.com/">"Oregon Solution."



A massive blue whale that washed up on a remote New Zealand beach had several shark bites, but experts said it was unlikely the sharks killed it. Fishermen found the 27-metre long, 150-tonne carcass about seven kilometres south of the Whanganui Inlet, at the southern end of Farewell Spit on the West Coast, on Tuesday.

Nelson abalone fisherman Philip Walker said most of the tail had been chewed off and there were other bites on the whale's body. He said Department of Conservation staff had confirmed the bites were made by great white sharks.

"It's the biggest one I have seen," Mr Walker said. "It was huge."

Another fisherman at the scene, Kina Scollay, was attacked by a great white shark, which took a bite out of his leg, off the Chatham Islands in 1995. Whale expert Anton van Helden, collection manager of marine mammals at Te Papa in Wellington, said it was likely the bites were made after the whale died. A tissue sample would be taken for Auckland University's whale database.

More: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/blue-whale-washes-up-on-nz-coast-20090528-bo5x.html

And what does the injury Kina Scollay suffered in 1995 have to do with the fate of this poor creature?

Folkloric. Local color.

We don't tend to think about the fact that like any other critter, whales do just up and keel over eventually. Most of the time they just float around until they disintegrate, and we never know about it - the ocean's a damn big place! But apparently every now and then one washes up, usually in the form of a "blobmonster".

This guy looks pretty fresh. Let's see if they can get the Isshin Maru up there to do some of that famous "whale research" they perform. Okay, that's sarcasm, but, seriously... this guy could be a boon to science, especially if it died of natural causes.