My response to the request for today’s column was, “what precisely do you mean when you say ‘exploding whales’”?
Today’s Moment of Science… precisely that, exploding whales.
For most critters great and small, some rather smelly chemistry commences not long after we expire. In the process of putrefaction, tissue that used to be quadriceps and gall bladders and buttholes is rendered into protein rich meals for bacteria. Those wee beasties proceed to inflate a carcass with noxious farts composed of methane, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide.
It’s rather unpleasant, but nothing to be concerned about for a decomposing critter that doesn’t require construction equipment to move.
When a very large animal dies, like a whale, the gaseous accumulation can be a problem if it washes ashore. That pressure is going to build up and, even with a controlled release by puncturing it, the smell of that gas and an imperial fucktonne of putrefied whale goo are gonna spew into the world with gusto.
There are several videos online of beached whales undergoing assisted eruptions. Which is the nicest possible way to say ‘did you know dead whales pop?’ A video from 2013 in the Faroe Islands shows a researcher barely avoiding being hit by tons of exploding whale innards while attempting to perform a careful incision.
And then there are the times whales are blown up. With explosives.
It’s, admittedly, an upsetting mental image. Truly though, how in fuck’s name are you supposed to move a dead animal with a dick that weighs more than you and one literal killer fart creeping up? Typically though they’re hauled to sea first, and the explosion is responsibly used to relieve gaseous build up and sink the remains. A whale carcass can nourish a complex ecosystem on the seafloor for up to a century. So rest assured, this is blowing shit up for the environment.
So, that whale explosion in Oregon.
Back in 1970, when things like the conservation of matter and gravity didn’t exist apparently, a 16,000lb deceased sperm whale was beached on the shore of Florence, Oregon. The explanation that’s come up over and over again is that a whale hadn’t beached there in a while, and shucks, they just forgot what to do because it had been so long.
I know that this was before you could google shit, but I’ve seen these memes about how y’all got to space with a slide rule and an abacus. Nobody could drop a dime or two for a whale removal expert?
George Thornton, as an engineer working for the Oregon Highway Division, had been tasked with whale removal. He figured half a ton of dynamite should do it. When an explosives expert was like “uuuh dude you maybe need ten pounds of dynamite, max” he was like “A HALF TON OR THIS WHALE EXPLODES ITSELF!”
(That’s at least how I like to imagine it went down.)
They didn’t merely want to make whale removal manageable by cleaving it into smaller parts, no. They wanted to ‘disintegrate’ it into pieces no larger than seagull feed. Far be it for me to stand in the way of some good clean fun with a half ton of dynamite and a rotting sperm whale.
For a brief moment after the explosion, surely the crowd marveled at the spectacle.
But then, the fumes.
Blood and giant pieces of goddamn sperm whale rained down upon them, the full weight of this decision hitting them in heavy, malodorous chunks. Even if some of the whale had been successfully blown to seagull-friendly sized bits, the utter cacophony of the blast scared the birds away. A three foot chunk of whale smashed a nearby car. Paul Linnman, an anchor for local KATU-TV, famously had the cameras rolling for the explosion when they had to cut filming to find cover from tons of rotted flying cetacean.
The Oregon State Park Department official policy is now to bury whale carcasses rather than apply high explosives to them.
George Thornton recorded the venture as a success, and was reportedly promoted six months later.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, minding the crosswinds for flying blubber.
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