Sperm Whale Washes Up On Nantucket's North Shore

A large sperm whale washed up along Nantucket's north shore on Sunday, and marine mammal officials are racing to recover and learn more about the deceased cetacean.

Members of the Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket (MMAN) inspected the carcass at low tide Sunday afternoon in several feet of water and determined it was a 50-foot male sperm whale. The cause of its death was not immediately known.

The MMAN volunteers were able to anchor the whale to shore before dark.

"We initially thought it was a North Atlantic right whale, just because of the pectoral fins, but then when we got down there, and you could see the narrow jaw on the ventral side of it," said Kim Schulam, MMAN's stranding coordinator. "So we got a rope around it, but we were not able to get it around the fluke because the bottom side of it was buried in the sand, and it was just too treacherous to try to dig under that with the waves coming in."

The MMAN volunteers are working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), and the Massachusetts Environmental Police during the recovery effort.

Following a meeting on Monday, they determined the deceased whale weighs an estimated 52 tons, and would be impossible to remove from the beach to perform a necropsy.

"Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket has been consulting with numerous experts at NOAA and IFAW to discuss next steps and what is possible," MMAN's Pam Murphy said in a statement. "Trevor Barrett of Barrett Enterprises, who skillfully removed the much smaller minke whale for us last year, was also on the conference call. The conclusion was that this whale was far too big, awkward, and heavy to remove from the beach. No amount of equipment could pull it off. We had hoped to be able to perform a full necropsy off-site, but that has been determined to be impossible. Given the tides and size, we will do a thorough examination in place to the extent that is safe, taking as many samples as possible. We expect to be joined by experts from off-island."

It is the first sperm whale to wash ashore on Nantucket since June 2002, when a deceased sperm whale was discovered at The Galls near Great Point. It was towed by a tugboat to New Bedford, and its skeleton now hangs in the New Bedford Whaling Museum. On Nantucket, the more well-known sperm whale stranding occurred four years earlier on New Year's Day in 1998, when a 46-foot male sperm whale washed ashore and died at Low Beach. Its skeleton now hangs in the Nantucket Historical Association's Whaling Museum on Broad Street.

Asked if there were any obvious signs indicating what may have happened to cause the whale's death, Schulam said. "Well, there was a gash on its back, and the head was pretty macerated, but it's probably been floating for a while, so that could be tissue breakdown and scavenging. So it's just really impossible to say at this point what it was."

The MMAN and Schulam are urging the public to stay at least 300 feet away from the carcass and view it with binoculars. They are also reminding the community that it is illegal to take any parts of the carcass.