Sue Heverling wrapped herself in a winter coat, clutched a pair of hiking poles and set out across a frozen mud flat near Anchorage, braving five-degree temperatures and treacherous ice to see the Alaskan city’s newest, and largest, spectacle.
She took her first tentative steps on the ice, slipped and fell, then got up and pushed on. As she drew closer, what had appeared modest from a distance now loomed before her.
“That is big,” Ms. Heverling, 62, recalled saying to herself.
The object of her fascination was the carcass of a 47-foot-long fin whale, which has drawn crowds in Anchorage for days.
The young female member of the second largest mammal species had probably washed ashore on the high tide on Saturday, according to Barbara Mahoney, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who examined the carcass.
Fin whales, considered endangered, regularly swim in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Strait. Every so often, minke whales, gray whales and humpbacks wash ashore in Alaska. But it’s unusual for a fin whale to be found on a beach so close to Alaska’s biggest city, Ms. Mahoney said.
So people are captivated. A nearby public trail, the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, is usually busy with joggers, bikers and cross-country skiers. This week, hundreds of pairs of eyes turned toward the mud flat and the dark-gray mound the size of a school bus. Residents have posted pictures of the mountain of flesh on social media, where it has inevitably spawned memes.
“People here in Anchorage, everyone’s real curious,” Ms. Mahoney said. “People come in with their sticks, on their bikes, walk in their skis.”
Ms. Heverling said that when she came close to the whale on Wednesday, she saw its mouth gaping open, revealing the baleen plates inside. The tail lay flat against the ice, positioned as if it were still gliding in the waters of Cook Inlet. Nearby, she saw a family with toddlers picking their way across the ice.
“It was sad to see it just lying there dead, but even though it’s sad, it was beautiful,” she said. “This is nature, and this is what can happen.”
A whale carcass can pose hazards so close to a city. In warmer months, it can develop a putrid smell as it rots. A buildup of gas inside the body could even cause it to explode. Bears could come around looking for a source of protein.
But the November cold has frozen the carcass, so the smell has been minimal, and the bears are hibernating, Ms. Mahoney said.
In an effort to find out what caused the whale’s death, Ms. Mahoney and a team of scientists performed a necropsy and will test samples from the carcass to look for signs of harmful algal blooms and diseases, she said. The absence of gashes or marks from fishing nets indicated the death was not caused by human activity, she said.
Ms. Mahoney said the carcass would likely return to the sea next month, when a high tide of more than 30 feet was expected to wash it away. Until then, she said, visitors would continue to come, including students on field trips from nearby schools.
“It’s cold, it’s windy, sometimes it can be smelly,” she said. “But there’s been a constant stream.”
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