Fifty years ago this November, the residents of Florence, Oregon learned how not to dispose of a dead whale. Now, a half-century later they have named a park after that lesson. The residents have recently chosen to name a local recreational area “Exploding Whale Memorial Park.”
On November 9, 1970, a 45-foot long, 8-ton whale, described variously as a gray or sperm whale, washed ashore at Florence on the central Oregon Coast. At the time, Oregon beaches were under the jurisdiction of the state’s Highway Division, which, after consulting with the United States Navy, decided to remove the whale using dynamite – assuming that the resulting pieces would be small enough for scavenger animals to consume.
It turned out to be a really, really bad idea. The explosion instead spewed large chunks of decayed whale on curious bystanders and even crushed a nearby parked car. The moment was caught on video and has since been memorialized on YouTube (see below.)
The NY Times reports that after the park opened last May with a temporary name. The city asked residents for suggestions for a permanent title, later narrowing those to a few in an online survey.
More than half of the final tally — 439 out of 856 responses — voted for “Exploding Whale Memorial Park.”
This brings back a whole pile of memories. In the 60s we had a whale wash up on our local beach in Scotland and the army blew it up spreading the dead whale over a square kilometre of land with the smell lasting for weeks.
Those who ignore the lessons of the past are destined to repeat them.
The exploding whale was one of the videos in a pre-streaming video era that one only saw if they had a cool teacher that somehow had a film of it squirreled away. There was a good reason to show video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsing in physics class, exploding whale was the scholastic equivalent of “hold my beer and watch this”.
I have friends that were part of an effort to remove a dead whale from a Seattle area beach in reactant times so the skeleton could be preserved for display. It was quite a process, the West Seattle Blog has a relatively comprehensive story on the process.
I am surprised they didnt call on the Japanese whaling industry and have them come out and carve up the whale.
The US Forest Service has been blowing up large animals (but not as big as whales) this for years. The linked document shows they use lots of explosives, much more per unit mass than was attempted with the whales.
https://lemurking.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/obliterating-animals-with-explosives.pdf