San Diego Baywatch rules out exploding dead whale

A dead beached whale in San Diego is going to be sticking around for another few days as authorities wait for better tides to help them shift the 50-foot (15m) cetacean. The fin whale, which was discovered on Saturday at 2pm local time by workers from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, probably won't be shifted until …

[davemcwish]

50-foot fish

Mammal surely ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring the '50-foot (15m) fish' error

It seems something of a wasted opportunity not to blow it up. How often do you get a massive target at a convenient beachside location just around the corner from the US Navy Pacific Fleet who own so much highly entertaining death tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Local Colour

There's a jet fuel pipeline running under parts of Point Loma.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like that's a bad thing.

I get all my environmental credentials from the Michael Bay school.

[Anonymous Coward]

A good thing.

Now that I've moved out of Point Loma ... fire away!

[Adze]

Here come pieces of...

...my God!

[mike 32]

Wow

Thank you for that HILARIOUS clip. Ah, the good old days, of apparently little forethought.

[laird cummings]

Back in the days...

...when Larry, Moe, and Curly ran the Whale Disposal unit of the Highway Dept.

[The Serpent]

Takes me back to 1997,,

..the first ever movie file I downloaded. It's raining blubber, hallelujah.

[TeeCee]

I always wondered about the Insurance claims:

"I left my car parked and it got landed on by a heavily singed chunk of whale."

Do exploding whales affect your no-claims bonus?

[TRT]

Whales, no. The Welsh, yes.

[Marty McFly]

Bury it

Us Oregonians have learned from our experiences. Now we simply dig a trench on the beach and push in the whale. All the little microbes go to work and a year later the whale is gone. We then dig up the bones and donate them to a local museum. Oh, and there is a boom in the crab population too.

Towing out to sea doesn't work that well. Sometimes the whale breaks during the tow. Or it washes back up on shore. But it does make for entertaining news.

And hauling to a landfill?? Right. Because it won't smell there, it will only smell when decomposing on a beach. Plus someone gets the wonderful task of carving up the beast to fit into the dump trucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I will never tire

of watching that video

[Peter Simpson 1]

Exploding whale video

Never gets old. Destined to enter video hall of fame along with "Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse".

//the one with the Oscar in the pocket, of course...

[lemmac]

Why only wasteful options?

When there are whole industries built on the goodies that a whale can provide... that whale is probably worth over $10,000 to the right person, endangered or not it's dead already... pack it in ice and ship it to Iceland.

[John 62]

dead from what?

I presume you mean sending it Iceland for meat, but it's not fit for the human food chain if it wasn't slaughtered by humans. Maybe you could get a few pallets of pet food out of it, though.

On the other hand, the bones and other by-products might well be useful for glue and whatever else the whale industry used to extract from them.

[sabba]

Erm!

"seagulls kept away by the smell"? How about blown to bits with the whale.

God bless America.

[technome]

They don't write 'em like that any more...

"The blast blaster blubber beyond all believable bounds!"

[Chris Seiter]

PETA?

Where's PETA in all of this? Maybe since the animal is already dead or it wasn't that cute when it was alive they don't care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, can't have a dead whale smell overpowering the shit smell from the waste water plant.

[Fred Flintstone]

Quality..

.. just quality. That video is *epic*.. Applaus, and thanks..

[laird cummings]

I particulalry like the 'splut-splut-splut' sound of falling ballistic blubber bits - Such a wonderfully cartoon-ish sound.

:)

[Armando 123]

Dave Barry

I remember reading about the Oregon whale in a Dave Barry column (back when he was funny) about twenty years ago. Just as hilarious as he said!

Thank you, el Reg, for making us laugh at love. Again.(C)

[laird cummings]

Dave Barry would approve

His column on the original exploding whale is side-splitting. No doubt, he'd approve of the lower-key disposal, this time.

[Mike Flugennock]

What do you MEAN, they're not going to blow it up?

Bah, Sissies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we take off and...

Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!!

(Yes, an overused quote on the Reg, but it's fitting and all I have right now)

Ten bucks says that whale falls apart when they try to tow it away, and then there are scraps of whale washing up for miles in all directions.

[kain preacher]

Sure blow it up, but this time use C4. If the blast from the C4 does not do the trick the secondary and much bigger blaster from the petroleum pipe lines should do the the trick. Of course it might take a larger section of the city with it but hey it's worth it. Google Texas city explosion to see what happens when a refinery blows .

[Anonymous Coward]

Not forgetting . . .

that if they leave it too long it could blow itself up - anyone else seen "Nature's Giants"?

[sebacoustic]

polar bears

There's some cool footage on the Beeb's latest "Frozen Planet" episode of a few Polar bears doing their bit to disposeof a beached finn whale. Presumably in the arctic it doesn't go off so quickly.

[laird cummings]

Bears don't care

Even if it does 'go off,' that's just an enticing aroma to them; eau de Rottenwhale - available at finer beaches everywhere.

[kain preacher]

It's also keeps it refrigerated so the bears can eat for a long time.

[kryptonaut]

Ow ow ow my sides hurt!

I can't believe I've never seen that video before. Utterly brilliant!

[ElNumbre]

Mother Trucker..

Be careful about trucking away that beast. I've seen stories of dead whales being towed to their disposal point, but the carcass being unable to contain the gas and going 'pop' in the city streets.

[Evil Genius]

In Taiwan

Must have been like an All-you-can-eat-buffet.

Mines the one with sperm whale in the pocket for later

[TRT]

Eurgh, you eat sperm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buried whales do not always rot

Depends on the soil. They buried one on the east coast of Canada some years back and dug it up last summer for the skeleton. Instead they found most of it intact -- a whole of degreasing went on.