Oceanographers Flock to View Body of Blue Whale That Washed Ashore

Federal oceanographers steamed out to remote, rugged San Miguel Island in a hurry Tuesday to examine a rare phenomenon--the body of a majestic, 80-ton blue whale that had washed ashore.

Only seven blue whales--members of an endangered species and the largest creatures on earth--have washed up in California since 1988, and scientists were excited to learn what they could before the carcass decayed too far.

“We’re suspecting that it died of natural causes out at sea and just washed in,” said marine biologist Ed Cassano.

“We may never know why it died,” said Cassano, who manages the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary, the federal preserve surrounding the five islands off of Ventura County. “But it’s a very unique opportunity to have a blue whale available for science to look at.”

From Santa Barbara, they piled onto the 56-foot-long research vessel Ballena. The seven oceanographers, from agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Park Service, headed for San Miguel Island about 36 miles offshore.

They equipped themselves well, Cassano said. They took video and still cameras, tape measures, sample jars, and steel flensing knives 2 feet long.

And they prepared themselves for the grisly task of cutting open a rotting carcass--stretched for 70 feet along the northwestern tide line of San Miguel Island--and trying to learn amid the screech of feeding gulls what killed the massive animal.

Samples will be cut on site and brought ashore, such as the heart, liver and lungs.

“They say that the heart of a blue whale is the size of a Volkswagen,” Cassano said. “It’s not like you can put that heart in a cooler, take it back to the lab and look at it. . . . It’s very messy work. It’s not very glamorous at all.”

Listed as endangered since 1966, the blue whale is only beginning to rebound from the carnage wrought by the overzealous whaling industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Only 2,000 blue whales surge through the waters off California now, scientists estimate, and there are barely 12,000 worldwide, where some say 400,000 blues once roamed.

Scientists figure 100 to 200 blue whales spend the summer around the Channel Islands, dining daily on up to 8,000 pounds of minute red crustaceans called krill, before cruising south to Baja for the winter.

They die in several ways: old age, disease and either blood loss or organ damage caused by collisions with passing ships.

“Usually freighters,” said Joseph Cordaro, wildlife biologist for the Marine Fisheries Service, explaining the force needed to damage the internal organs of a creature that grows to about the length of more than two city buses.

“We’ve had one [ship] come in with the whale draped around the bow,” Cordaro said. “They don’t usually even know they’ve hit a whale. They’ve noticed a slight decrease in speed, but they didn’t feel a big thud.”

But without clear evidence, such as massive bruising or propeller gashes, scientists may be hard pressed to learn whether old age, disease or something else killed the blue whale on San Miguel, Cordaro said.

The animal was first spotted by a Santa Barbara fishing charter on Sunday, and scientists figure it may have died at least a week ago--beyond the window of opportunity offered for successful tissue samples.

Signs of disease or age-related death are discernible within one to three days, he said. After that, decomposition blurs the clues.

So, the scientists must learn what they can as quickly as possible. They may return to port as early as today, but they will spend weeks analyzing the tissue samples and trying to learn more about the huge beasts.

“We’d like to determine a cause of death, but it’s a very difficult thing to do,” Cassano said. “NOAA’s put together a very expert group of individuals to determine that. If we can, great. If we can’t, we still have a great deal of scientific information.”

In the past, scientists have salvaged the carcasses of smaller whales, such as the more common gray whale, an estimated 21,000 of which live off the California coast--15 washed up each year.

In the spring, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History cut up and preserved the skeletons of two dead gray whales that had washed up along the county coastline, entangled in fishing nets.

It took hours of stomach-churning labor to slice the flesh from their frames and shift their bones with front-end loaders to the trucks that hauled them away to be cleaned, Cassano said.

But once the scientists leave San Miguel, the gigantic blue whale there will be left alone to the carrion birds, Cassano said. Or, if the whale is washed out to sea again, to sharks, storms and decay.

“This time next year,” he said, “it’ll be gone.”