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An extremely smelly minke whale that washed up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, will now be transported to a landfill.
A local said the stench was so bad it was “like death in a dumpster,” according to reports.
The dead whale was first spotted on July 17, floating 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) off Manomet Point, according to a Facebook post by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Northeast and Central Atlantic Fisheries. He had already passed away. The next day, the carcass washed up on a private beach.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare examined the whale but was unable to perform an autopsy (called an animal autopsy) because there was no plan to dispose of the body, according to NOAA. The group determined that the minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) was a man of 21 feet long (6.4 meters).
The cause of death is unknown, but the stranding is part of an unusual mortality event for minke whales. Since 2017, this species has experienced a higher than average stranding rate along the east coast from Maine to South Carolina. According to NOAA, the cause of this unusual fatality event remains a mystery: There were 18 autopsies of stranded minke whales. Two showed signs of human interaction before their deaths; nine showed signs of interaction with the peach (such as scars from entanglement in nets or lines); and eight were suspected of having contracted an infectious disease.
There is also an ongoing unusual mortality event among the Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), which started in 2016 along the East Coast. However, NOAA researchers could not find any common thread in the strandings between species of whales. According to the agency, collecting enough data to determine the underlying causes could take years.
NOAA Northeast / Mid-Atlantic is now working with the Homeowners Association (HOA) which is responsible for the beach to plan a disposal strategy. The preferred method of treating a whale carcass is to let it decompose right where it is, according to the agency. A dead whale is a boon to scavengers and ultimately returns the nutrients from the whale to the ecosystem. But it is not practical in this case due to the smell of the animal and its proximity to the city.
“I live on the hill on the other side, and there are days when you walk outside hoping to smell the sea air and all you can smell is a dead whale,” said Lynn Holdsworth, a local resident. told NBC Boston. “And it’s like death in a dumpster. It’s horrible.”
As a result, the HOA is now working on securing heavy equipment to transport the whale to the nearby Bourne landfill.
Originally posted on Live Science
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