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While officials on Friday mulled what to do with a whale carcass rotting on a beach in ritzy Malibu, Calif., some locals were worried it might attract some unwanted visitors: sharks.
Five days after the carcass landed on the beach, officials from the city, county and state were still unsure about what to do and who would do it.
"We have not yet been informed of any removal plans," Malibu spokeswoman Olivia Damavandi told NBC News Friday morning.
Readers on Malibu Patch exchanged comments criticizing the delay, and how to dispose of the juvenile fin whale, which weighed an estimated 40,000 pounds before seabirds got to it.
"Burying the whale where it lays will cause an oil slick to emanate from the burial spot, attracting sharks for many years," posted one reader, referring to the fact that the whale's blubber will gradually decay into oil.
The comments included an earlier incident in San Onofre, Calif., where surfers attributed an increase in shark sightings to the burial of a whale at a nearby beach.
Damavandi said she didn't know if sharks could become a problem, but added that "as somebody who surfs in Malibu quite often, my common sense tells me it is probably not the best idea to enter the ocean anywhere near the whale carcass."
Nick Ut / AP
People on Thursday look at the dead male fin whale in Malibu, Calif.
Cindy Reyes, director of the Malibu-based California Wildlife Center, echoed that "common sense" gut feeling.
Officials on Thursday said they feared the carcass was too decomposed to be able to tow it out to sea, and Reyes told NBC News that the center had arranged for a professional marine tow service to go to the site Friday for an evaluation.
"If it's too decomposed," she said, "it would have to stay where it is."
Boaters captured video of a humpback whale lifting its tail out of the waters of Dana Point, California. TODAY.com's Dara Brown reports.
The whale washed up between Paradise Cove and Point Dume, near the homes of celebrities like Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan.
It appeared to have been hit by a ship and had a gash to its back and a damaged spine, according to the results of a necropsy by the California Wildlife Center.
Fin whales are listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. They can grow to up to 85 feet, weigh up to 80 tons and live for up to 90 years.
The West Coast population of fin whales was estimated at around 2,500 in 2003, down from nearly 3,300 in 1996, the federal government says.
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Leave a Comment:
Aquatic life are the true owners of the ocean, I say leave the whale where it is and let nature take its course.
Send the Malibu cougars down to the beach to take care of it.
If anyone choses to go swim while the whale is decomposing on the beach, then it is just natural selection working as nature planned.
Okay, now NBC News is just f'ing with us. Two stories about the dead Malibu whale in one day?
More sharks + Surfers = Surf Burgers.
"Mr. Treehorn draws a lot of water in this town. You don't draw @!$%#, WHALE. Now we got a nice, quiet little beach community here, and I aim to keep it nice and quiet. So let me make something plain. I don't like you sucking around, bothering our citizens, WHALE. I don't like your jerk-off name. I don't like your jerk-off face. I don't like your jerk-off behavior, and I don't like you, jerk-off. Do I make myself clear?"
Build a big cooking fire and cook it. 6 cords of wood should do it. Render the oil
@LouK2k12
Let nature take its course after a young whale was killed by a ship?
mj899,
You left out a line: "Call me Ishmael."
No thanks necessary.
Fear???
Damn!!! Use some common sense and stay out of the damn water!!! Nothing to fear if you don't get in the water with a rotting whale carcass!!
no thanks then
all they need to do is put a metal covering over it something like a big drain pipe that goes under a road block off both ends allow an air vent. Start a fire at one end with 3 x 3 foot stack of wood. Keeping adding wood and it is 12 hours it is done.
Too obvious that an MSNBC writer or two are living in Malibu.
Denver Bill and Tracy Good Evening and Boat Drinks on the Patio!
Is that those two legged cougars AKA California Cuties?
Tracy
That would be Darwin at his best - might thin some genes from the pool, and I don't men Levis!
Greater chance you'll die driving to the beach than from a shark attack at the beach; whale or not!!
Call Japan - they tow 'em away for free.
I feel bad for the mermaids.
Here's a idea. The rich @ssholes that live there should pay their maids and gardeners overtime and have them hack it up with their switchblades and hedge clippers and throw it into a dumpster. Or they could hire Alan Harper and get him to do it. (sarcasm)
Boat drinks, jack. (Kudos to "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead.")
Cheap sushi?
if possible it should be towed out to the red triangle near seal island and left for the sharks there to devour it.
*knock*knock*
Who's there?
Land Shark!
Bazinga!
"UM..Candygram..."
I STILL find that SNL skit funny, even at this age. It was esp timely and funny given the fear of Jaws going on at that time..
No mam, I'm only a dolphin.
"Western Union".
Call that guy who blew up the whale in Oregon in 1970
yeah ! blow this whale to bits like that one but use way more powerful explosives and don't park any nice cadillacs nearby !
Well, yeah - it's what sharks do, and why they're so important to a healthy ocean.
Whew, for a while there I thought Rosie was sun bathing.
Or Rush.
If, as it seems, the whale was killed by a ship, nature has little to do with this. Whales died of natural causes until we built giant ships that broke their backs and killed them with metal and speed. We humans live outside nature now. We have since the Industrial Revolution. We're too fast and too much for nature to keep up with.
How many whales have died in 2012 due to ship strikes? Three? Whales can live for 100 years. That's potentially 300 years of life cut short by human carelessness.
Whew, for a while there I thought Rosie was sun bathing.
HAHAHAHA
All you need is an excavator and dump truck. That whale could be moved in 2hours, then taken inland and buried. 40,000 lbs. is nothing.
Have you ever actually seen the carcass of a large whale on a beach after it's been there for even a few days? It's not exactly a solid piece of mass waiting to be gracefully picked up and moved. I saw a dead humpback on a beach, and it was unspeakably huge and smelly. But the flies liked it.
For pete's sake, it's on a private beach, by the homes of kijillionaires. They have enough money to pay a big boat to tow it waaaaaaaaay out to sea.
Those people are wealthy because they don't spend their own money when they can spend OPM (other people money).
Dillion you took the words off my keyboard, almost word for word!! I work for a company and we have too much heavy equipment for me to have seen this carcass laying there til it was gone!! Shoot only one dump trailer would be needed. I doubt the thing weighs 20 tons anymore!
A whale cut in half is a problem cut in half.............
Ewe, say the rich. If all those stars are so smart? Harvest the thing. They still use oil for lamps and other things. I guess those same stars that do all the talking about recycling don't really care after all!
I think oil lamps would be so cool. Has anyone called in the League of S.T.E.A.M. or any other steampunk companies? Would they allow whale oil to be rendered?
Good question Elk! Who knows if you are allowed to even touch a whales dead carcass to render it for oil...I know what I would do if such a thing was unlucky enough to wash up in my back yard......(pay to have had it removed already...it would have been gone the moment I first saw it!!!) I guess if you need a permit or license to try and use the remains, now maybe a bit too late without MAJOR filtration...peeeee yooouuuuuu!!!
sell it to a chinese restaurant... order number 10 with white rice and egg roll to go.
How appropriate that a rotting whale ends up in the same neighborhood as the rotting celebutards...tell me there isn't some irony here, maybe even a message from God!
It would be great to have some B and C list actors and directors use it to make a movie, including skimpy bikinis and some excellent music and dramatic squinting and a lot of arm waving. Maybe have some huge mutant sea creature come up and stomp around. And then go ahead and blow up the whale for the grand climax.
I'll take 5% of the box office receipts.
Tell the rich people to throw money at it. Wait wait, hold on, they may take that literally.
Tell Barbara Streisand to get her big fat butt down there and push the thing out to sea. Who cares? This is only a story because it is near celeb homes in Malibu,,,I say leave it. Let them smell the stench that closely resembles their lives....ROTTEN!
anyone remember that time those guys tried to blow up a dead whale with dynamite... whatever you do... DONT DO THAT!!!!
youtube it... it's ridiculous...
Do it! Do it!
how about a drive or swim by sushi stand?
Blow it up with TNT!!!
Let it remain where it is and rot. Streisand et.al. are lovers of nature, and what better way to live it than to observe the benefits of the death of an animal which will nurture so many other less fortunate animals just trying to make it through a tough world. The seabirds, the crabs, the worms, and the sharks will all benefit from some nice rotting blubber which is easily digested. Please help these poor animals have a few hearty meals this Christmas season Barbawa.
Damn that thing sure flattened out since the last story...
Feed it to the Obama poor.
Probably would be a step up from what you feed your family.
At least I work to feed my family. I don't rely on Obama to make it happen. I can see your use to had outs.
I can see you probably are illiterate. Shows in your spelling and poor sentence structure.
Laz~ LOL!
Vill is gettin' ready to do that ol' Hillbilly Stomp, and THEN fall down drunk.
Don't want to burst the bubble of the uninformed, but I've never seen a land shark except on Saturday Night Live....
Can't the Republicans "wish" it away?
Microwave it on high for 30 -40 hours.
The only real problem here is that the owners of all those ritzy Malibu homes think that their money entitles them to a pristine, non-smelly beach free of sharks. Unfortunately for them, rotting whales and hungry sharks are all natural and totally organic. Live with it!
The only people on this beach are the reporters. This time of year, Malibu residents are typically inside, and rarely set foot on their pristine beaches a few months after the new wore off! It's similar to the thousands of wasted mosquito-attracting swimming pools, rarely used, but fawned over, and ignored, while the maintenance is typically done by a service, again, after the new wears off, or the kids move away.
.. huh, shouldn't this thing have been pulled back out the ocean several miles off shore within hours of it being found for health reasons? I could see delaying something like that maybe a day or so so biologists could possibly get samples for study, but no longer.