© Wayne HamiltonVolunteer firefighters worked to move a dead juvenile pilot whale Friday morning. The whale, which weighed about 500 pounds and did not show signs of propeller damage, will be studied by researchers at Allied Whale in Bar Harbor.
What they didn't know was that they'd be lifting a whale - a 500-pound dead pilot whale, to be precise.
"[They had] not a clue," Officer Mike Larrivee of the Searsport Police Department said. "They all showed up and said 'oh boy, what are we doing here?'"
The dead whale, believed to be a female, had been found Thursday at the beach at the end of Lobster Lane, just east of Moose Point State Park. A man walking his dogs found the animal and called to report it. Larrivee then got in touch with Allied Whale, the marine mammal research arm of the College of the Atlantic, which helps Searsport with seals or other marine mammals. But this was something different, he said.
"This is the first whale I've ever seen here, other than the ones on Bar Harbor whale watching trips," Larrivee said.
On Friday morning, Searsport harbor master Wayne Hamilton and Larrivee took a boat to the beach, and towed the whale very slowly by the tail fin back to the town dock, where they met Tom Fernald of Allied Whale. He brought a student with him to pick up the pilot whale, but they found they needed some help to get it onto the stretcher.
Enter the volunteer firefighters.
"The volunteer fire department was kind enough to help us pick up the animal," Fernald said later that afternoon. "They were just so helpful. This was a very fresh animal, in very good condition. It was terrible to see the animal dead, because it was in such good condition."
He said that it was unclear why the immature whale died. It did not appear to have propeller damage or other signs of human or boat interaction, Fernald said, and his students will do a necropsy on Monday to look for the cause of death.
"This will be an educational opportunity for us," he said.
Pilot whales are an offshore species of toothed whale common to the Gulf of Maine. They tend to live in large social groups and dine on mostly fish and squid. It's unusual to find one inshore in early spring, he said.
"Nobody's common this time of year. We don't see any cetaceans this time of year," Fernald said.
As part of the necropsy of the whale, his students will open up the animal to see whether they can find the cause of its death. Then they will flense its flesh down to the skeleton and bury that in a compost pile. Then, after a few months, the skeleton should be cleaned and ready to display or otherwise use.
"It's sad that it died," Larrivee said. "But it's great that the kids get to see this firsthand and learn from it."
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