"I'm a marine biologist"

"I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment, I was a marine biologist."
- the American comedy show Seinfeld

The 90s sitcom Seinfeld is in my opinion the best thing to ever happen to American comedy. It's famous for being a show about nothing - the series profiles a group of young adults living in New York, and while there are mini-plots within each episode about the minutia of their lives, there is no long-term development of the story. Each episode spins on its own head, as two or three different scenarios are laid out and then pulled together in an hilarious crescendo. In one episode, George Costanza pretends to be a marine biologist in order to get an old college friend to notice him. Check out the clip here.

Marine mammal crime scene tape. It exists.

I was actually reminded of this episode yesterday because I found myself face-to-face with a beached whale. That's right, friends. Earlier this week, a blue whale washed up on Ophir Beach, about an hour and a half south of Coos Bay. A few friends and I had been planning to go on a hike in that area anyway, so we decided to trade mountains for beach and use our Saturday to check out the whale.

When we arrived, it wasn't hard to spot the whale at all - mostly because blue whales are the largest animal on Earth, but also because there were numerous cars parked along the road and a small crowd of people on the beach. The whole area around the whale was roped off with what looked like crime scene tape, except that it bore the words "protected marine mammal." Inside the tape, a number of people were working to disassemble the whale carcass. They were dressed in trash bags and plastic rain gear, yielding giant knives.

Volunteers work to remove soft tissue from the carcass.

My two friends and I approached the person in charge and got the ok to cross the tape line as volunteers. After all, disassembling a whale carcass takes lots of man power, and we wanted to help. We were directed to a portion of the carcass that included the scapula and a pectoral fin. It had been separated from the main body, I'm guessing with chainsaws, and dragged up the beach. It was our job to cut off chunks of blubber and any other soft tissue to expose the underlying bone, then toss the tissue into a fire pit where it would be burned. I learned that burning and burial are the two most efficient ways to get rid of whale flesh, but the bones are typically saved for public display. After most of the flesh had been removed, the plan was for the various sections to be loaded into a giant net and sunk in shallow water, so benthic scavengers could take care of the fine-scale cleaning. The clean bones would then be retrieved, dried, and saved in a museum.

Belive it or not, it was a lot of fun working on the whale carcass. There were volunteers from numerous different marine labs around, and everyone shared a certain camraderie. I guess chopping up putrefied mammalian flesh is a bonding experience.

There it is: the blue whale, 75 feet long.

I know you're wondering about the smell, but I can tell you it wasn't actually that bad. It was definitely a distinct smell - one that I'd recognize again - but it wasn't as strong as I expected. Of course it was worse the closer you got to the carcass, but after about 5 minutes of sawing away at slightly-liquified blubber, you got used to it.

We worked away for about three hours, helping first with the scapular section and then moving on to the fluke (tail fin). The fluke wasn't very far along, so we ended up just removing the skin, which I was astounded by. It was a good 3-4 inches thick and tougher than anything I've ever tried to cut before. We made a little bit of headway with knives, then the rest of the skin was ripped away from the fluke by an excavator driving in reverse.

When we were ready to leave, we stepped into the ocean to wash off our gloves and rain pants. Honestly, the water didn't help that much, because whale flesh is incredibly greasy. The thick, fatty bits still stuck to us, but thankfully, we were able to get it off with soap back at the lab.

Disassembling a whale carcass is pretty high on the list of awesome things I've done in grad school. It may also top the list of the most disgusting thing I've ever done. One thing is for sure, though: I love my job.