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Exploding whale

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After dynamite was used to explode a rotting beached whale, chunks of blasted whale caused spectators to flee in panic.

There are two known incidents of an exploding whale. The better known explosion occurred in Florence, Oregon in 1970 when a dead gray whale was blown up by the Oregon Highway Division in an attempt to dispose of the rotting carcass and became famous when American humorist Dave Barry wrote about it in his newspaper column. Footage of the incident later appeared on the Internet. The other reported case of an exploding whale was in Taiwan in 2004 when a build up of gas inside a decomposing sperm whale caused it to explode while it was being transported to have a post-mortem performed. As well as these incidents, exploding whales are a theme a number of authors have used in their works.

Oregon

File:PDcapture1.jpg
The Oregon Highway Division failed to anticipate the consequences of blasting this beached whale.

In November 1970 a 45-foot (approx. 14 metre), eight-ton gray whale died as a result of beaching itself near Florence, Oregon. The Oregon Highway Division (now known as the Oregon Department of Transportation) had jurisdiction over beaches, and was given the task of removing the whale carcass. After consulting with officials at the United States Navy they decided that it would be best to remove the whale in the same manner as the removal of a boulder and, on November 12, they used half a ton of dynamite to blow the whale up. This decision was made because they thought that burying the whale would be ineffective, as it would soon be uncovered, and they believed that the use of dynamite would cause an explosion that would disintegrate the whale into pieces that were small enough for scavengers to clear up. Interestingly, the engineer in charge of the operation, George Thornton, was recorded as stating that one set of charges might not be enough and more might be needed. Thornton later explained that he was chosen to remove the whale because the district engineer, Dale Allen, had gone hunting. [1] [2]

The resulting explosion was caught on tape by television news reporter Paul Linnman, who described himself as a "land-blubber" and reported that "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds." The explosion caused large pieces of blubber to land quite some distance away from the beach, resulting in a smashed car, and also scared away scavenging birds. The scavengers would have been unable to quickly dispose of the whale in any case, as the scattered chunks of whale meat were too large for them to handle in one piece. The explosion also didn't disintegrate most of the whale, which remained on the beach for the Oregon Highway Division workers to clear away.

At the end of his news story, Paul Linnman noted that "It might be concluded that should a whale ever be washed ashore in Lane County again, those in charge will not only remember what to do, they'll certainly remember what not to do." It is reported that 41 sperm whales beached nearby in 1979; State Parks officials burned and buried them. Nowadays, beach managers do not tend to blow up dead beached whales but instead tow them out to sea. This is mainly for safety reasons, as the rotting corpses have been known to attract sharks and so become a danger to beach-users.

For several years the story of the exploding whale was held to be an urban legend, however it was brought to widespread public attention by Dave Barry in his Miami Herald column of May 20, 1990 when he reported that he had footage of the event. Sometime later the Oregon State Highway division started getting calls from the media as a bastardized version of the article was distributed on bulletin boards under the title "The Farside Comes To Life In Oregon" and had come to the media's attention. The footage that was referred to in the article, taken by KATU Channel 2 for the news story reported by Paul Linnman, resurfaced later as a movie file on several websites and became a reasonably well-known and popular Internet meme [3][4]. These websites have been criticised by animal rights activists, who complain that they are making fun out of acts of animal cruelty, even though the whale was already dead. Their critical e-mails were subsequently published by the bemused site webmasters.

The story of Oregon's exploding whale was widely known on Usenet for quite some time and was in particular discussed on alt.folklore.urban, a newsgroup devoted to urban legends. The incident was recorded in the newsgroups's 1991 FAQ, then maintained by Peter van der Linden, where it was marked as Tb (believed true, but not conclusively proven) [5]. In 1992, after newgroup poster "snopes" tried to verify whether this was true or not the newsgroup received confirmation that it was a true story and marked it as true [6] [7].

Taiwan

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The whale explosion in Taiwan happened due to a natural build-up of internal gases during its transportation to a research centre near the southwestern city of Tainan.

A similar incident occured on January 29, 2004 in Tainan, Taiwan. In this incident, a build-up of gas inside a decomposing sperm whale, measuring 17 meters (56 feet) long and weighing 50 tons, caused it to explode. The older bull whale had died after becoming beached on the south-western coast of Taiwan and it had taken more than 13 hours, 3 large cranes, and 50 workers to shift the beached sperm whale on to the back of a truck. While the whale was being moved, eTaiwanNews.com reported that "a large crowd of more than 600 local Yunlin residents and curiosity seekers, along with vendors selling snack food and hot drinks, braved the cold temperature and chilly wind to watch workmen try to haul away the dead marine leviathan" [8]. Professor Wang Chien-ping had ordered the whale be moved to the Shi-Tsao Natural Preserve after he had been refused permission to perform a post-mortem at the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan. The whale was being transported on the back of a lorry/truck through the center of Tainan from the university laboratory to the preserve when the explosion occured, yet although the explosion was spectacular it did not stop researchers from performing a post-mortem on the large mammal.

The explosion was reported to have splattered blood and whale entrails over surrounding shop-fronts, bystanders and cars. BBC News Online interviewed an unnamed Taiwanese local who said, "What a stinking mess. This blood and other stuff that blew out on the road is disgusting, and the smell is really awful." [9] After the explosion, the Taipei Times noted that many men were interested in the size of the whale's penis, which was recorded as being five feet long. They wrote that "more than 100 Tainan city residents, mostly men, have reportedly gone to see the corpse to 'experience' the size of its penis" (cited MSNBC, [10]).

Exploding whales in books

Exploding whales are a theme written about by several authors:

  • Australian children's book author Paul Jennings wrote a book called Uncanny!: Even More Surprising Stories (ISBN 0140375767) that features an exploding whale
  • In Patrick O'Brian's 1937 short story Two's Company, a pair of men manning an isolated lighthouse find themselves at the center of a "seabird and shark feeding frenzy, not to mention an atrocious stench" when a huge whale is washed up against their lighthouse by a storm. They dispose of the hazard by begging for some explosives from a destroyer sent to re-supply them.
  • In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (chapter 18), a sperm whale materializes in thin air above a distant planet, only to fall several miles to the ground, exploding as a result of the impact.
Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in my ... my ... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what's about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do ... perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This ... let's call it a tail - yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ...
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn't it?
And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ... ow ... ound ... round ... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

References

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