Whale Carcass Removed From Beach, Buried at Dump

In a surprisingly smooth operation, a lifeguard boat Friday pulled a 25-ton whale carcass off a craggy beach at high tide for a short journey that ended with the huge creature’s burial at the city dump.

Dozens of curious spectators gathered at daybreak on the cliff above Devil’s Cove in La Jolla to watch lifeguards make their second attempt at removing the giant sea mammal, whose post-mortem plight had engrossed the public for two weeks.

“It’s funny,” said one resident, Larry Lewis, “that you’d have more people here to see a dead whale, when just a few hundred yards away you could see a live whale migrating. There have been a lot of tourists coming around asking dumb questions.”

A week ago, efforts to extricate the whale were thwarted when a line attached to a Coast Guard craft snapped and the big, smelly body refused to budge.

This time, with the tide at its fullest and the whale already floating slightly, lifeguards attached cables to the beast’s midsection. A fire and rescue boat pulled the carcass to sea for the 90-minute voyage to Fiesta Island in Mission Bay, while sea gulls and television helicopters circled above.

At Fiesta Island, a stretch of beach known for its sludge beds and the annual civic softball tournament/bacchanal called Over the Line, six front loaders lifted the body onto a supersized dump truck.

After a 15-minute trip down the freeway, the truck deposited the body at the Miramar landfill, where it was quickly covered by the daily load of rubbish, to the squawking dismay of the gulls.

The California gray whale, an adult female, died while on the migratory path between Alaska and Baja California.

The steep cliffs made it impossible to bring in heavy equipment by land to lift or haul the animal away. So with the waves nonexistent and the ocean quiescent, a decision was made to tow the rotting remains to Fiesta Island.

Once the carcass was on land, the procedure was overseen by Dennis Simmons, the official responsible for removal of dead animals from city beaches. In five years, he has removed numerous sea lions and seals, eight goats (washed to sea by El Nino) and three other whales (though none this big).

“That’s how it’s supposed to happen,” said a satisfied Simmons as the whale was placed in the bed of the dump truck.

Times correspondent Paul Levikow contributed to this story.