A dead sperm whale — the length of half a basketball court and the weight of a fully loaded tractor-trailer — has washed up on Nantucket for the first time in decades.
It’s too big to move. At least until officials figure out a plan.
The roughly 50-foot male sperm whale washed up on the island, a former whaling hub off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, on Sunday. The cause of death was not immediately clear. The last time a sperm whale washed ashore on Nantucket was in 2002, according to The Nantucket Current, the news outlet that first reported on the whale.
In 2002, the sperm whale was towed for nine hours by a tugboat to a nearby shipyard. Then it was loaded on a flatbed truck and driven to a landfill for a necropsy to determine how it died. Its bones are now displayed at a whaling museum in New Bedford, Mass.
Scientists had hoped to follow a similar routine for the latest sperm whale, but they determined this week that it was “far too big, awkward and heavy to remove from the beach,” the Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket said on social media.
“No amount of equipment could pull it off,” the nonprofit said.
The 2002 male weighed 45 tons, at the upper limit of a male sperm whale’s typical weight. This one is estimated to weigh 52 tons.
The alliance said that it would consult with Nantucket officials on what to do with the carcass, and that it was in touch with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sperm whale populations have been recovering since the 1980s, when the International Whaling Commission put a moratorium on commercial whaling, but the species is still endangered.
Representatives for the nonprofit were not available for comment on Wednesday night. Neither NOAA nor the Town of Nantucket responded immediately to inquiries.
Nantucket’s town’s manager, Libby Gibson, told a local newspaper, The Inquirer and Mirror, on Wednesday that the latest plan was to drag the whale far enough offshore, ideally sometime before Thanksgiving, so that it doesn’t wash ashore again. The newspaper posted a video showing people sawing off the animal’s lower jaw, in what it said was an effort to prevent thieves from stealing the teeth.
The alliance said the public may observe the whale, from a distance of at least 300 feet, in accordance with the Endangered Species Act. Footage posted on social media by the Nantucket Current showed people gathering on the beach near the carcass.
“We welcome you to come see and honor this magnificent creature that contributed so much to Nantucket so long ago,” the alliance said on Wednesday.
Sperm whales are named after the waxy oil sac found in their heads that helps them hear. They were once a primary target of the commercial whaling industry because their oil was used for lamps, candles and lubricants.
Whaling was the primary business on Nantucket from the 1690s until the 1850s, according to the Nantucket Historical Association. The island’s native Wampanoag people harvested stranded whales, and English settlers there began hunting the animals in boats around the late 17th century.
Whale hunts inspired “Moby Dick,” Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel, and Nantucketers love his description of their home:
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it — a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background.
Never mind that while Melville was on a whaling journey that left from New Bedford in 1841, he didn’t visit Nantucket until 1852, a year after his masterpiece was published.
Mike Ives is a reporter for The Times based in Seoul, covering breaking news around the world.
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