What to Do With a Dead Whale Washed Up on a Beach?
In November 1970, the Oregon State Highway Division had a problem on its hands. A stinking whale of a problem. What to do with a 45-foot, 8-ton sperm whale, whose rotting carcass had washed up on a beach near the small coastal town of Florence, in Lane County, Oregon? One option was to let nature take its course, and allow the carcass to decompose. However, Florence’s residents did not want to endure to stench of a rotting whale for the few years it would take for it to decompose. Nor did they want to swim in waters that reeked of whale runoff.
It had been so long since a dead whale had washed up in the region, that nobody could remember how to get rid of one. Highway Division concluded that to drag the behemoth off and bury it was not a good idea, because decomposition gasses would destabilize the grave and uncover it. The risk would be reduced if the whale was cut up before burial, but nobody wanted to chop up the stinking carcass. Then somebody came up with a bright idea: why not blow it up? As seen below, that backfired badly.
