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| Last updated at 4:35 PM on 03/07/08 |
Officals dispose of washed-up whale  
CHRIS LEBLANC
The Sackville Tribune Post
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| Officials with New Brunswick's Department of Natural Resources and area contractors begin the arduous task of removing a whale carcass from the beach at Slack's Cove near Rockport on Wednesday afternoon. The whale washed ashore over the weekend and hundreds of local residents have been visiting the site to get a close-up look of the 50-foot mammal. (Tower) |
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A 50-tonne whale that washed up in Slack’s Cove on Saturday, June 28, has been removed from the beach and buried inland.
After more than seven grueling hours of work on Wednesday evening, Department of Natural Resources officials have disposed of the decaying carcass, which is believed to have been a fin whale, by using heavy machinery to move it to a woodlot near Rockport for burial.
Leon LeBlanc, a resource supervisor for the DNR, said the whole process was especially difficult because of the location of the carcass.
Due to the nature of the landscape, trees were cut down in order for heavy machinery to get close to the rotting whale. Once down there, the 50-foot long carcass was hoisted up the bank with a winch, though the steepness of the hill made things even more difficult.
“It was a slow process,” LeBlanc said. “You couldn’t have done it without the big winch on that truck.”
The original plan was to place the carcass onto a trailer and move it to the woodlot; but due to its enormous size it was impossible to maneuver.
“So we basically dragged it out with two excavators,” he said, adding that a truck primarily used to pull tractor-trailers out of ditches was used.
“We pulled it on to the woodlot just past Rockport and we buried it.”
While everything was in place for the move at around 4 p.m. yesterday, the DNR crew wasn’t finished until 11 p.m. that night.
Whale carcasses have been disposed of in the past by moving them back into the ocean and anchoring them so they’ll decompose. But Leblanc says with the strong tides in the Bay of Fundy, that would have been next to impossible.
“And with the shallow water of Slack’s Cove it would have been kind of dangerous to bring a boat in there because you can only go in at high tide,” he said, “and that would probably be during the night these past few days.”
“Burying it was the best option.”
It is not yet known what caused the whale to come ashore, where it later died in the open air.
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02/07/08
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