Whale’s Death Still a Mystery

From snout to flukes, the dead blue whale discovered last weekend on San Miguel Island measured 73 1/2 feet and weighed more than 100,000 pounds--but the cause of its death remains a mystery, scientists said Wednesday.

“I’ve seen thousands of whales, but this was my first time ever standing next to a blue whale, and it was just immense,” said Stephen Beckwith, who joined the research team that examined the carcass. “This was quite the sight, bigger than a dinosaur.”

The carcass lay beached in the surf zone in Simonton Cove, on San Miguel’s rocky northwestern shore, and scientists brought only the equipment they could carry from their moorage four miles away, said Beckwith, the executive officer of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

With huge knives, biologists cut samples of the animal’s skin and blubber. But they were unable to get usable samples of heart, lung and liver tissue, he said, because more than a week of decay had turned the whale’s innards to mush.

They also tried unsuccessfully to cut away enough of the gigantic jawbone to reach the bones of the whale’s ear, which they could use to determine how old the animal was. But the jaw weighed more than a ton, they lacked the gear to move it, and again, decay stood in the way.

Bacteria had bloated the whale, and the process of decomposition caused it to heat up.

“It was boiling hot to the touch,” said Frances Gulland, a marine mammal veterinarian with the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif. “It was amazing. It was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. It was as big as a house.”

There are still no clear clues as to how the massive creature--a member of an endangered species and one of the largest animals on the planet--died and washed ashore on the remote island 60 miles from Ventura.

There were no signs of bruising or propeller gashes that would have pointed to a collision with a ship. Nor was the whale tangled in fishing tackle, another lethal hazard to the whales, some 200 of which spend the summer around the Channel Islands.

But chemists will analyze the samples to make sure there were no traces of heavy metals or other toxins that could have killed the whale, Beckwith said.