YAHOO News!!
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The reeking
carcass of a dead humpback whale was towed back out to sea some 24 hours
after washing up at a popular Los Angeles County beach Friday.
Authorities used boats pulling ropes attached to the
tail to pull it off the sand during the evening high tide, taking the
whale far out to sea and avoiding a foul stench and grim scene on the
beach as Fourth of July weekend crowds began arriving.
Authorities had earlier attempted the procedure at
midday, with a bulldozer pushing, but it was unsuccessful because of the
low tide.
The huge whale washed onto Dockweiler Beach, a long
stretch of sand near the west end of Los Angeles International Airport,
just before 8 p.m. Thursday and holiday beachgoers began arriving in the
morning.
Lifeguards posted yellow caution tape to keep people
away and biologists took samples to determine what caused the death of
the humpback, an endangered species. Beachgoers watching from a distance
covered their noses.
Tail markings were compared with a photo database and
found that the same whale had been spotted three times previously off
Southern California between June and August of last year by whale
watchers who gave it the nickname Wally, said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a
whale research associate with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
County.
At the time of the prior sightings the humpback was
covered with whale lice, which usually means a whale is in poor physical
condition, but it was also actively feeding and breaching, she said.
Schulman-Janiger said she noticed healed entanglement
scars on its tail indicating that in the past it been snarled in some
sort of fishing line. The carcass was in relatively good condition which
meant the whale could have died as recently as Thursday morning, she
said.
The whale was about 46 feet long and at least
15 years old, meaning it had reached maturity, said Justin Greenman,
stranding coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Skin and blubber samples were taken for DNA testing along with fecal matter to be tested for biotoxins.
The experts had hoped to more extensively
open up the whale but due to the holiday weekend authorities decided to
get it off the beach as soon as possible, Greenman said.
North Pacific humpbacks feed along the West
Coast from California to Alaska during summer, according to the Marine
Mammal Center, a Sausalito-based ocean conservation organization.
Although the species’ numbers are extensively depleted, humpbacks have
been seen with increasing frequency off California in recent years, the
center’s website said.
Humpbacks, familiar to whale watchers for
their habits of breaching and slapping the water, are filter feeders
that consume up to 3,000 pounds of krill, plankton and tiny fish per
day, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The whale that washed up is not the same one
spotted earlier in the week off Southern California tangled in crab pot
lines. That animal was identified as a blue whale. Efforts by a rescue
crew in a small boat to cut away the line failed, and it disappeared.
California
has seen a number of whales on beaches this year. A humpback carcass
that appeared off Santa Cruz in May had to be towed out to sea, while a
massive gray whale that ended up on San Onofre State Beach in April had
to be chopped up and hauled to a landfill.
The same month, a distressed humpback was
freed from crabbing gear in Monterey Bay. In March, a dead gray was
removed from Torrey Pines State Beach.
