© Capt. Travis LovellCapt. Travis Lovell took pictures of a rotting whale carcass he ran across last week in southern Terrebonne Parish
If Capt. Ahab really wanted to find the great white whale, maybe he should have spent some time along the Louisiana coast. F
or the second time in two months, a deceased sperm whale has washed up onto shore in the Bayou State.In the latest encounter, Capt. Travis Lovell took pictures of a rotting whale carcass Dec. 28 in Terrebonne Parish's Sister Lake. Lovell said the whale had already been discovered by others, but when he got home, he posted the pictures to social media and they went viral.
"I had one client with me that day -- a guy from Minnesota -- and we were pretty much done," Lovell recounted. "Another guide that I network with passed by, and said, 'Man, the craziest thing happened earlier: I could swear I saw a whale this morning.' I said, 'No way. On a scale from 1-10, how sure are you it was a whale?' He said, '9.5.'"
The client and Lovell both wanted to verify the sighting, so they went where the other captain told them, and sure enough, there was a 23 1/2-foot sperm whale tied up to a bulkhead. The stench was borderline unbearable, so Lovell got upwind to snap a few photos with his phone.