People, understandably, will go to great lengths to get rid of a dead whale. In one infamous instance, authorities in Florence, Ore., tried to vaporize a rotting carcass with 20 cases of dynamite, but instead ended up showering themselves and everyone else in the vicinity with pieces of putrid blubber.
Surprisingly, some people will also go to great lengths to obtain a dead whale. When David Duggins, supervisor of marine operations at the UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories, secured the remains of a 54-foot fin whale that had risen to the surface near Everett last November, it was only because he’d spent three years waiting for his name to rise to the top of a waiting list.
Dead whales are desirable for a variety of reasons, mostly scientific, although some Native Americans request the bones for ceremonial purposes. Duggins wanted to create a new ecological niche by sinking the whale near San Juan Island, and in late November he did, weighting it with three tons of surplus railway wheels. Now he plans to dive down and visit it, and to study it remotely using a camera-equipped submersible vehicle.
A single sunken whale can create communities of undersea organisms that thrive for half a century or more, Duggins told the Everett Herald. In a couple of years, when sea creatures have picked the skeleton clean, it will be exhumed and donated to the Burke Museum.