 Matt Marinkovich and Paul Collins of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History take measurements of a dead sperm whale just west of Goleta Beach on Tuesday. Photo by Easter Moorman / Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
*** WATCH THE VIDEO ***The sperm whale, a female of moderate-to-old age, is the first to be recorded on Santa Barbara County’s mainland shores in at least 35 years, said Paul Collins, the museum’s curator of vertebrate zoology and a member of the three-person museum crew that handles marine mammal strandings. Normally, Collins said, sperm whales inhabit the ocean more than 100 miles offshore, beyond the Continental Shelf. “It’s unusual to see them come in on the mainland coast, and they are very rarely seen in the Santa Barbara Channel,” he said. “They like deep water.”  The teeth of the sperm whale were cut off and broken by vandals. Photo by Easter Moorman / Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History The museum crew was finally able to reach the whale at low tide Tuesday morning at a spot between Goleta Beach and the steps at UCSB parking lot No. 6. From the whale’s state of decomposition and the algae that was growing on her blubber, the scientists estimated that she must have been floating for about two weeks before washing up. “None of us had ever seen a sperm whale up that close,” said Krista Fahy, the museum’s associate curator of vertebrate zoology. “They’re really unique animals. I wish that she had been a little fresher.”  Michelle Berman, museum curator of vertebrate zoology, measures the whale's jaw. Photo by Easter Moorman / Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Just offshore, puddles of oil from the whale blubber looked like Canola oil in the surf. At points, reaching inside the enormous animal in front of a crowd of spectators, the scientists were not sure what they were pulling out in the way of rotting organs. But they did salvage five undamaged teeth from the whale’s jaw that will be cut into sections and “read” for their age, much as tree rings can be read. The scientists found samples of skin still hanging on the whale that will be tested for DNA. They took a fecal sample to study it for domoic acid, a toxin associated with dolphin and sea lion deaths.  A family observes the dead sperm whale, an adult female that washed up on county shores last weekend. Photo by Easter Moorman / Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History At about 2 p.m. Tuesday, a county work crew rolled the dead whale into a deep pit at the base of the seacliffs and covered it with sand. But because of the size of the whale and the proximity of the sea, the body may not stay buried long, Collins said. “It may start to break through the sand,” he said. “Don’t be surprised if we hear word of this whale reappearing here.” |
