Sad news — especially for those who seized the opportunity to be mesmerized by cetacean sublimeness in the past couple of months. The mama gray whale who had been living in the Klamath River since June 24 — and who’d been alone since her calf swam back out to sea July 22 — has died. Monday evening, she beached herself on a sandbar, and she died at 4:19 a.m. Tuesday with people who had been monitoring her health by her side.
Most agreed that mama’s health had been deteriorating more rapidly over the last few days. A press release issued by the Yurok Tribe suggested the whale died of natural causes, but a necropsy had yet to be performed.
Tuesday morning, the whale’s body could be seen in waist deep water about 25 feet from the Klamath’s north shore and roughly a half-mile west of the Highway 101 bridge.
Yurok tribal members and a team from Humboldt State led by professor Dawn Goley made arrangements to move the corpse out of the river, where they could more easily assess its cause of death. White sheets dampened with a boat’s hose kept the whale’s skin moist so it would be easier to move and analyze, while the team waited for an excavator that would drag the whale by the tail to shore.
Yurok Tribal Chairman Thomas O’Rourke Sr. summed up the experience in the tribe’s Tuesday statement. “To have such a large animal in our presence for so long was a great gift, but now nature has taken its course,” he said. “It is truly unfortunate that she didn’t try to make it back to her home.”
It is. Thanks for the magic, mama.
R.I.P.
This article appears in Vulnerable Part 2.
The comment “thanks for the magic” in the above article is troubling.
While, from our point of view, being near enough to view the whale may have been in some way thrilling for us – the experience for the whale was neither thrilling nor magical. She was caught in an environment that was toxic to her health and she couldn’t find a way out. Instead of making her way up the coast she circled relentlessly in what can be described as confusion. The mis-navigation that resulted in her being in the Klamath river caused her physical and I’d suggest, psychological distress.
I’m glad the whale is no longer suffering but find the whole episode unfortunate.
If we are going to anthropomorphize, then I think we could just look at it as her time. Nature’s way. Still, it’s very sad, and troubling. And magical.
Kudos for the all the whale photos and this. Please keep us informed when cause of death is determined–many need to know.
Sigh.
We tend to anthropomorphize all of the creatures that we don’t eat.
It’s truly a tragic situation to lose such an amazing animal and her calf. I’m surprised that she survived as long as she did out of her necessary habitat.
I agree with Loren. It was not magical for the whale. She suffered horrendously because of the US Navy active sonar which had driven her and her baby into the river as well from the torture she had to endure from the Orca sounds, pipe sounds, explosions, etc., conducted by NOAA and the Yurok Tribe to chase her out into the ocean so that they can proceed with their yearly salmon festival. Whales have brains ranging from dog, monkey, human and much larger than human size brains. No need to make a stink out of people “anthropomorphizing” the whales. Why don’t we throw this word “anthropomorphism” into the trash can, it serves no purpose.
I’ve waited and wanted to see how many crazy theories would sprout out about a whale beaching herself, something that has happened for thousands of years before, and will happen again. I am glad that the US Navy, the one and only Navy, or people who have ships and boats and submarines in the ocean, that the US Navy alone uses active sonar.
Oh wait, they don’t.
Anyway, can we blame active sonar for the deer and other woodlands critters that run into lighting started forest fires? What about birds that abandon their nests and young? At least we know it was active sonar, not nuclear testing, that caused Godzilla to go on his? Her? Rampage.