When I was a university student (in the late 1990’s), my friends and I misspent much time fooling around on the internet. I distinctly remember watching (repeatedly) a video of an exploding whale: a piece of 1970 news footage showing a dead eight ton sperm whale being blown up with 500 kilograms of dynamite in order to remove its remains from a beach in Oregon. The effort was not entirely a success. Chunks of blubber were showered over a considerable radius, damaging vehicles and causing onlookers to run for cover. (I feel like part of internet history for having enjoyed this video; check out Andrew David Thaler’s piece on the relationship of exploding whales to the history of the web.)
Whales do not only explode because they’ve been seeded with half a ton of dynamite. When a whale dies of natural causes (or – more likely – from ingesting plastic, or being struck by a ship), its thick layer of blubber keeps its internal body temperature high for far longer than would normally happen when an animal (or human) expires. This allows for a decomposition process called autolysis, in which the whale’s tissues are broken down by the enzymes and chemicals inside its body, releasing gases such as ammonia and methane into the whale’s body cavity. The whale can become massively distended by these gases, and may eventually explode (as a side note, this was one of the dangers faced by flensers and the other men who dismembered whales caught during pre-industrial whaling times). Here’s a recent news report about a Canadian town facing this risk, which seems to be generally overstated.
Exploding whales have re-entered the public consciousness several times over the last few months. The engineer responsible for the 1970 exploding whale passed away in October last year prompting a wave of reminiscence, and a new generation of internet users have been able to marvel over the piece of beauty that is the KATU news broadcast showing the carcass exploding in the background. Several dead whales are washed ashore each week – a couple of blue whales in Canada caused the most excitement recently (and spawned hasthewhaleexplodedyet.com), but a check of google news alerts shows that this is far from an unusual event.
What does all this mean for you?
No one likes to see a beached marine mammal. It’s upsetting to see a creature that is so easy and graceful in the water, out of its element on the beach. Familiarise yourself with the protocol for dealing with stranded marine mammals if you live near the coast. There are some (American) examples of what to do here and here. In South Africa, the NSRI and local law enforcement will typically handle strandings, possibly with assistance from the public. You should follow their instructions, and stay back if they ask you to. You should also remember that only very rarely is their a happy ending for a stranded marine mammal – typically animals that end up on the beach are sick, weak, or otherwise compromised, and – horrible though it may seem – euthanasia is the kindest thing that can be done for them. It is also likely that the whale will be sampled for scientific research purposes; it is rare for marine mammal researchers to be able to have such ready access to their research subjects! Whales on the beach are a boon for science.
If a stranded marine mammal dies, you will be relieved to know that the state of the art technique for dealing with dead whales on the beach no longer involves explosives. It entails loading them on a truck and driving them to a landfill. In areas where there aren’t too many sharks inshore, they can even be buried on the beach or towed back out to sea. The risk of a whale exploding on the beach is really low, and there are actually not too many reports of this happening.
If you actually want to know more about exploding cetaceans, the Atlantic has a lovely round-up of the phenomenon of exploding whales, but be warned – it’s not for the squeamish. Simon Lewster explores the changing symbolic import of whales, as they evolve from symbols of the global conservation movement to harbingers of doom, their bodies loaded with toxic chemicals absorbed from the oceans around them. For a more general overview, here’s a good place to start: hasthewhaleexplodedyet.com. You could also visit this site, which looks as though it arrived in a time machine, and is dedicated to exploding whales.
Finally, for a reminder that marine mammals have been ending up on the shore since they started to live in the sea (and that people have never quite known what to make of the phenomenon), here’s a news report about an old Dutch painting that was recently restored to reveal a whale lying on a beach. Previous viewers of the painting had been puzzled by the small crowd gathered around an empty piece of sand; a whale had been painted over, perhaps because the subject matter was deemed too macabre.
[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMgUPTbqih4&w=540″]
