A dead whale exploded in his face and now he says, "It was an extreme experience" – 21/05/2019

In 2013, social networks began to be described, timidly, as something of weight in people's lives, but without the place they show in 2019. The viral thing was something common, yes, but not the same. everything with the strength of today. It is in this context that a video of a few seconds showing the explosion of a sperm whale dead in front of the face of a biologist he traveled quickly Internet, and was for millions of users as one of the best known viruses.

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The protagonist of this one is Bjarni Mikkelsen, biologist of the Faroe Islands of the North Atlantic. In the pictures, we see him wearing an orange jumpsuit and a sickle, with which he tries to open the corpse until the animal explodes, literally, and extends the viscera in front of his face. Nearly six years after being miraculously saved, Mikkelsen spoke with Clarin from the experience that he relativised, but that he also called "extreme"

– Your life was in danger?

– No, luckily I did not stand in front of the material that exploded in the animal cavity. If I had been in front of the whale, the material would probably have grown about six meters from the wall of the house in front of the whale, which could have hurt me. Plus, I had the knife in my hands and it could have hit me and hurt me too. I lost the knife of my hands in the blast and he broke into the wooden wall of the house.

– What did this experience mean for you?

– Nothing in particular. We knew that there was gas and pressure on the whale. We expected the pressure to be as strong as the gas escapes slowly. Maybe because I had made a cut along the belly of the whale, this caused the pressure and guts coming out at the same time.

– Why did this corpse explode?

– Just because the dead animal starts to break down, which produces a gas that can not escape from the whale's cavity and the pressure builds up in the body. Sometimes whales explode. But most often, a small crack in the body is open and the gas can escape slowly.

– Why were you investigating this whale?

– The plan with the corpse was to keep the skeleton to be exposed in the old whaling station. As a result, all meat and fat was removed and the skeleton was soaked in seawater to remove organic matter. Now it's clean but it has not been rebadembled yet.

– Was the experience strong?

– Yes, in my career as a whale biologist it was the most extreme experience.