WAITING FOR A WHALE TO DIE

Waiting for a whale to die.
510mm x 635mm. Oil on canvas, 2008

 

Many of my paintings have stories attached to them and this one is true but also sad. One of the first shouts I had as a volunteer Coastguard was to go to Burntisland docks where a whale had grounded at the inside of the western breakwater. There was nothing we could do for the whale but our job was to make sure that sightseers came to no harm. As it happened, the weather did that for us. It was a gloomy January morning and the conditions were awful. A westerly gale was lashing spray over the breakwater which mixed with the horizontal rain. A solitary policeman had already arrived at the pier and cut a lonely, forlorn figure as he held on to his hat and braced himself against the buffeting gusts.

 We parked on the pier near the harbour light. Bill stayed in the vehicle while John and I kitted up and joined the policeman in the howling gale. Fortunately there was a fisherman's hut there which was a convenient windbreak. Bill had been on the radio to the Coastguard control center at Fife Ness.

"We've to wait here till the whales pronounced dead."

"Whose going to do that?"

"Oh, that's up to a vet."

We all thought, correctly, that it would be a long day.

What for us was a cold, wet and windy vigil was transformed in the next days press into an exciting, multi agency rescue operation that, sadly, failed to save the whale.

"SSPCA officers and other specialists were called to Burntisland docks shortly after 8.30am after police received reports that a large whale was stranded in the water and appeared to be in distress.

Even as rescue operations began experts held little hope of saving the whale as it had not moved in some time, while the operation was significantly hampered by the strong winds and driving rain lashing the Fife coast.

After inspectors managed to examine the whale more closely it became apparent that the animal, which was partially submerged, was not breathing and had indeed died."

The Courier, Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Word of the whales grounding was obviously spreading as a few people from wild life groups and sanctuaries started to turn up, followed by a T.V. news team. The young woman journalist was decided underdressed for the conditions but interviewed a huge, bearded guy who was some sort of animal expert and reminded me of the comic strip character Desperate Dan. Another strange character arrived curiously undressed in what I eventually realised was a pink wet suite and asked if we'd go over to the breakwater and lower him with our cliff rescue gear onto the whale. Bill said NO. We only do that sort of thing if human life is in danger. He said he was a vet, but he was not THE VET. Sometime during the day one of the Briggs Marine barges went out and the crew tried to slip a rope round the whale, but failed. Later that afternoon the official vet arrived, glanced at the whale and immediately pronounced it dead. "Great!" I thought. "Now we can go home."

It must have been on the Sunday that I popped along to the docks again. I was curious to know what type of whale this was as identification had been impossible on the day as the creature was mostly submerged and the conditions were awful. Briggs Marine had by this time towed it into the east dock and I was able to stare down on this big, black hulk. There were no identifiable features so I was none the wiser. Someone else came along to look at it and we struck up a conversation. He seemed to know something about whales and said the scarring marks on the back of the whale suggested it was a sperm whale.

That's the last I saw of the creature, but I read the account of it's removal with great amusement in the Fife Free Press that Thursday. A great crane had been brought down from Aberdeen, a container lowered into the water and an attempt made to stuff the whale into the container. The whale, however, was too fat. An eye witness reported,

"There was no way they were going to get it in. It was disgusting to watch. The smell of the whale was so bad that people were gagging."

Then they tried hoisting the beast onto the dock but the slings were slack and the whale slipped out, fortunately falling into the water of the dock again.

Photos from the Fife Free Press, January 31st, 2008
The distinctive jaw of the Sperm Whale can be seen against 
the green and white stripes of the crane. 

 

Next day they tried again, but using tighter slings. This worked and the whale was taken away to a rendering plant in Moray for disposal.

So what kind of whale was it? The Fife Free Press  has it as a 15 foot Minke but it's as long as the forty foot trailer used to remove it. It was definitely a Sperm

Whale, although not full grown. The Moby Dicks of the planet can grow to 70 foot and 80 tonnes. This was all very sad that such a fine and rare creature, still young, should die in this way but it could have been worse, at least for us. It could have exploded. I watched a video once of a truck carrying a dead whale passing through a Korean village, at night. The whale exploded, breaking shop windows, overturning motorcycles and festooning the area with putrid guts. I leave you with that malodorous vision.