Whale Carcass Raising a Stink in La Jolla

Gather near for the story of the great white whale that stubbornly resists the determination of seafaring men to bend it to their will.

No, not that white whale.

The dead one at Devil’s Cove in La Jolla, just off Bird Rock. So far, the 25-ton interloper has thwarted the attempts of city lifeguards, the U.S. Navy, the Marines and the Coast Guard to haul its rapidly deteriorating carcass to sea for disposal.

In the process, the city has inherited a new, albeit morbid, tourist attraction, one possessed of its own distinct odor.

Two weeks have passed since the 40-foot whale washed ashore dead, an apparent victim of the long migratory trek between the Bering Sea and Scammon’s Lagoon in Baja California. Each day the curious and the fixated make their way to the decaying hulk.

The sea gulls and the press were there Wednesday, and so, too, were overnight visitors and recent arrivals to San Diego.

A newly minted San Diegan from Ohio made her way to the craggy cobblestone and sand beach determined not to be disappointed again. She had gone on a whale-watching outing but failed to catch even a glimpse of one of the leviathans.

“I would prefer to see a live whale, but I guess a dead one will have to do,” said Nancy Sluzewicz, a bookkeeper formerly of Dayton. Her husband took pictures.

A crew from San Diego Gas & Electric Co. was also there to see if, perchance, its expertise in rigging and hauling could be of assistance.

“I am not risking our equipment on this,” said the foreman after surveying the secluded site.

A Whale of an Assignment

The Marine Corps, whose proudest boast is “No Beach Out Of Reach,” had made a similar decision last week when asked to consider sending one of its CH-53 Super Stallion cargo-hauling helicopters from the Miramar Marine Air Station.

Alas, the risk of the giant helicopter taking a tumble or its prop wash damaging the pricey homes on the cliff above the cove was considered too great. Plus, there are Department of Defense regulations that would have hindered the use of a chopper.

“The poor whale just picked an unfortunate place for its final resting spot,” said Marine Maj. Stephen Kay.

From its amphibious assault base in Coronado, the Navy sent in a 135-foot-long Landing Craft Unit--of the kind that took Tom Hanks to the D-day beach in “Saving Private Ryan,” only much, much bigger.

But LCU 163 pulled back lest the flat-bottomed boat be damaged in the uncharted rocks and choppy currents.

“The water is very shallow there. One wrong wave and a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment is on the rocks, all for a dead whale,” said Lt. Cmdr. Stone Tweten. “My [personnel] folder would be a very short one after that.”

The Coast Guard last week sent a 41-foot patrol boat, but a towrope attached to the animal’s tail snapped as the craft’s dual diesel engines began to strain. The whale refused to budge.

A hundred onlookers at nearby La Jolla Hermosa Park groaned. Lifeguards riding Jet Skis returned to their headquarters to plan the next attempt.

“You know that line about ‘If it’s not in the Yellow Pages, it doesn’t exist,’?” asked B. Chris Brewster, chief of the San Diego lifeguard service. “Well, there’s no listing for whale removal services.”

Although man’s efforts to intervene have failed, nature’s forces have been relentless.

When it was alive, the whale--an adult female California gray--was a mottled charcoal color. In death, the bleaching process continues unchecked. The whale’s once taut skin now has the squishiness of tofu.

Before last week’s removal efforts began, the stench of large-scale mammalian death had become overpowering, wafting on the afternoon breeze into the backyards and dining rooms of the million-dollar homes above.

“It was like being assaulted by the most vile smell imaginable,” said one resident.

Luckily, the putrefaction period passed, and as of Wednesday, the stench was generally confined to the immediate downwind proximity of the beached beast. Residents are learning tolerance.

“We’re lucky there’s no odor anymore,” said the Rev. Lawrence Waddy, an Episcopalian minister. “We understand how difficult it is to remove the whale. It’s a very large task.”

One rumor held that the creature was J.J., the sickly whale nursed back to health at Sea World and released 10 months ago amid much fanfare. One of J.J.’s former keepers, Keith Yip, examined the carcass and found it too small and lacking J.J.’s distinctive markings.

As a removal stratagem, the tow-it-by-the-tail idea is no longer viable. Under cover of darkness, vandals, for reasons unfathomable, severed the tail from the body on Friday. The lifeguard service posted all-night guards to prevent further desecration.

Ever resourceful, the San Diego public has forwarded a number of suggestions for the lifeguards’ consideration.

One idea is to slice the carcass into manageable chunks for easier removal. A private company has offered to do the slicing and hauling for about $5,000.

Another suggestion was to have a whale of a bonfire and just incinerate the corpus. “I’m not sure that having whale-burning smoke blowing over all of La Jolla is what we want to do,” Brewster said.

Soliciting Solutions

After an urgent We Need Help message was sent out on a lifeguard Web site, lifeguards in Newport Beach suggested that the whale be buried on the beach. Which is what was done in that Orange County venue when a deceased whale landed there in 1988.

The problem is that a carcass this big--for reasons involving stomach gases or something--has a good chance of rising up from beneath the sand, like some aquatic Freddie Krueger refusing to stay dead.

And then there was a suggestion from a high-tech San Diegan that giant helium balloons be attached to the whale and the carcass be floated gently over the city to the public landfill at Miramar and then gently lowered down. Don’t look for that any time soon.

A more likely scenario involves another attempt by lifeguards and the Coast Guard to drag the whale to sea with ropes securely fastened around its girth. This week’s rising tides have moved the body down the beach--but have not reclaimed it.

The early morning tides in the next few days are the highest of the month. Unless the surf kicks up, a final push is planned to rid the beach of the rotting remnant.

“We’ve been told that blubber floats,” Brewster said.