Why Are Whale Strandings Still a Mystery?

For millennia, mass strandings of whales have confounded us. Why should dozens or more whales come onto shore only to die a terrible and lengthy death?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. Uh. You know, we've been sheepish about tour
announcements lately, but we can finally announce our well, let's
just call it h our tour. Some cities we've been to,
some are new, someone's been a while. Yeah, we're coming
to cities all over the Conental Us and parts of Canada.

(00:23):
If you live in either of those two places, there's
a really good chance we're gonna be somewhere near you
at some point this year. Chuck, I'm psyched. We're kicking
off in Toronto on August eight at the Dan fourth
Music Hall. It's going to be great. And then the
next day we're gonna be in beautiful Chicago on August
nine at the Harris Theater. Uh. And then the next day,

(00:45):
August nine at Dan fourth Music Hall in lovely Toronto, Canada,
North America, Planet Earth. And then we're too next so
I don't know, how about Vancouver on September and then
the next day we're gonna be a min Neapolis on September.
Those are gonna be awesome, that is correct. Then we
are going to take a nap, and then we're going

(01:07):
to wake up on October ten in Austin Texas, wonder
how the heck we got there, and remember that we
have to be at the Paramount Theater for our show. Yeah,
that's called the Austin Wake Up. And then Chuck, the
next day, we're going to be for the first time
ever in beautiful Lawrence, Kansas at the Liberty Hall on
October eleven. That's gonna be huge. And then equally huge

(01:31):
is what's next. We have a special three night second
home stand. We call it our second Home that's because
it's the Bellhouse in beautiful Brooklyn, New York. October. We're
gonna be there three nights in a row. And finally
we're gonna wrap it up in true stuff you should
know fashion here in Atlanta at the Bucket Theater on

(01:54):
November four, and there's gonna be a very special show.
Stay tuned for more details. But it is going to
be a charity benefit show. And not only are we
donating of our dough, uh, we got our booking agent,
in venues and promoters and everyone is chipping in to
donate large portions of their dough as well. So I'm

(02:16):
pretty excited about that. Yep. So it's gonna be a
great tour, Chuck, We need to go get our rest. Yes,
and you can go to s y s K live
dot com to get all your details because that is
our touring home on the web and tickets are going
on sale this Friday, June ninth, So visit s y
sk live dot com for ticket links. And if the

(02:36):
ticket link doesn't happen to be there, do not fret,
Just go to the theater home page and you can
find out all about it there. We'll see you on
the road. Welcome to Stuff you should know from house
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

(02:58):
I'm Josh Clark with Mr Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
roundly liked fella and uh another roundly like person Jerry
Jerome rolling me. People can take a lad me. What
a weird start. Yeah, it's weird, but this is a
weird episode. Man, you think sure it's mysterious at least

(03:23):
that's mystery is weird? Uh, yeah, mystery is weird. There,
that's a T shirt. Prove my point, man, it's I've
been a long time since we came up with a
T shirt. Well, yes, since we pointed one out. Yeah
for sure. Yeah, mystery is weird. Josh Clark, that's y
sk s right, or some people say s U s K,

(03:45):
I've never gotten that. Well you knew the text version.
I don't know. I guess I think it's just a mistake.
I think so too. It looks weird. To each his own,
that's another good T shirt. Yeah, well that's our motto
here stuff you should know to each their own. That's right,
So chuck um. Back in February of this year, and

(04:07):
not too terribly long ago, down in New Zealand at
a beach called Farewell Spit in Golden Bay. It's on
the top of the South Island of New Zealand. Okay um,
they had a huge, huge mass stranding of whales, pilot
whales to be specific, about six hundred. Imagine that. It's

(04:33):
a satisfy thing. You can see. Well, yeah, there's one
of them. There's a I was reading an article I
think it was from The Guardian that it was basically
on location interviewing people down there. They were like, this
is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
It's alver experienced anything worse than this. Is dead pilot
whales everywhere, dying pilot whales everywhere, and apparently the local

(04:56):
authorities put out a call to people living in the
area saying like cancel school, calling sick to work, like
we need your help down here. And there's this group
called Project Jonah that's a New Zealand basically a whale
rescue group. And it's pretty appropriate that they're from New
Zealand because from what I understand, New Zealand has the

(05:16):
highest incidents of whale strandings or I think even cetacean strandings,
which you know is an ending up on a beach
um in the world. But the as an International Whaling
Commission puts it, any country with the coastline has is
going to have a problem with mass strandings of whales.

(05:39):
In Germany it did happen, which is not landlocked. It
turns out. Yeah, it's just heartbreaking to see these beautiful,
humongous creatures, uh, just laying there dying an awful, awful death.
And um, there's a a lot of, like I said,

(05:59):
mystery to the whole thing. We're not entirely certain why
whales end up stranded, especially on mass um. There's a
lot of pretty good hypotheses, some of which are probably true.
It's there's probably multiple explanations, but there is definitely some
some weirdness to it still. And then there's a lot
of debate about what exactly you should do during a

(06:23):
whale stranding. Should you help them, should you kill them? Um?
And then should you kill him? Yeah, exactly. And then
then there's a lot of debate also about what exactly
you should do with a dead whale stranded on the beach,
because those things, you don't just flush them down the toilet.
They're pretty big. Yeah, And when I said dying in

(06:43):
awful death, um, they well, there's a lot of things
that happen. Uh. Their skin burns, yeah, they have very
soft sensitive skin. Yes, So just to be out there
in the sun like that, they equated it to like
a third degree burn on a human just laying there
in the sun. Um. Seagulls come in and don't even
wait for them to die, and apparently have a thing

(07:05):
for going for the eyeballs. So a dying live whale
being having its skin burned and eyeballs picked out, Yep,
that's a big problem. And then you also, I didn't
think about this, but so a whale is a marine mammal, right,
they come up to breathe but they're there equipped to
be in the water where gravity is is less. Yeah,

(07:29):
they're they're huge, and so they need that water to
uh well, when they go and land, big problems happen. Yeah,
they encounter the pressure of gravity um pressing down and
then they actually start to to suffocate under their own weight.
The big problem is while they're laying there on the beach,
they it takes them a very long time to suffocate.

(07:50):
They have a tremendous obviously tremendous reserve of blubber, so
they don't starved to death first, and they very infrequently
do so. Over the course of days, possibly even weeks,
they're laying there suffocating under the weight of gravity, being
crushed by the their own blubber, yeah, and their their
own organs being crushed under their own weight. So it's

(08:11):
a bad jam. It's a pretty bad scene. Yeah, it's
just really really sad. And to fully understand how to
help whales and other cetaceans from becoming stranded in the
first place, we have to understand why they become stranded.
And there's a a lot of investigation into this, but
apparently it's nothing new from from what I've seen as

(08:34):
far as long as humans have been keeping records, there
have been reports of mass whale strandings all over the world. Yeah,
and you cobble together quite a few articles for this. Um.
One of the really good ones was what causes mass? Uh?
What causes whale mass strandings? From the conversation by Robin
Grace and um she points out that you know, like

(08:57):
you said, this has been going on forever since people
have been writing it writing it down. And um, lots
all different kind of species of whales this can happen to,
and dolphins and other cetaceans. But um, it says she said,
short finn pilot whales are the most frequent or he.
I guess it could be like that guy from Cheers.
It is r O B y N. That's that's always

(09:20):
a she? Right, No, Robin Hitchcock spells his name with
a Why doesn't he? Oh? What a confusing world. I
talked to him in an elevator. Uh, the sketch best
that last year? Really? Yeah? What are the Egyptians with him? No? Wait,
wasn't he in the band? What band? The band? Oh?

(09:42):
What was the in? Originally? I don't know he was
in like a what major band like that first, I
wonder he's definitely not the band. He's English. Um, sorry,
where were we? Oh? Yeah, yeah, So pilot whales short
finn pilot whales are the most frequent U strand strand
ease I guess um false killer whales, melon headed whales, uh,

(10:07):
melon headed whale and that name uh, the Cuvier beaked
whale and sperm whales. Um. These these are all very
much deep sea dwellers, very social fish. And this is
one of the problems as they hang out together in
the hundreds and so um, one of the thoughts, uh,
Like you said, there are a lot of different hypotheses,

(10:28):
but one of the thoughts when they see these mass
strandings is whatever. And we'll talk about what might get
that first whale there, whether it was just sick or
confused or out of its depth trying to go for
some prey, uh like, out of its comfort zone its deep. Yeah,
but maybe the other hundreds are just tagging along. Right.

(10:53):
So there's this there's this big drive, especially among environmental
protection groups, to say this is human caused in large part,
and there is a whole branch of strandings that probably
are that actually almost certainly can be accounted or chalked
up to human activity. But there's also a big wide

(11:13):
portion of animal strandings, cetacean strandings that appear to be
natural in nature. Right. And so some of those hypotheses
are that initially, like one whale or something was sick
or maybe injured, um, and came in toward shallower water

(11:33):
so it could come up to surface for air more easily,
and when in a little too shallow and got trapped there. Um.
It's possible that a pod of whales were chasing some
very valuable prey into areas that they weren't familiar with

(11:54):
that were too shallow, um, and they got stranded there
as well. And there's there's a couple of uh parts
to this that that makes the whole thing makes sense
a little more. One is that echolocation that is part
of it's basically the number one sense that um marine
mammals use. Uh. It's it doesn't work very well in

(12:17):
shallow waters, right. Yeah, So they do their navigational aid,
they get into these shallower waters, like you said, maybe
they were chasing something to eat. All of a sudden
they find themselves out of place. They don't know which
way to go, So they inadvertently swim towards the shore
and accidentally beach and maybe they've got hanging out with
twenty or thirty pals because their social because which makes

(12:40):
it all so sad. That's a big cue though, or
a big clue that, UM, these are deep sea marine
mammals that strand on gently sloping sandy areas. Yeah, and
they found some uh, I guess anecdotal evidence. UM, some
whales in the North Sea that were beached or stranded

(13:01):
had recently digested oceanic squid. So they thought, well, you know,
maybe they had gone in chasing the squid, had just
eaten it and didn't know which way to go to
get out of there. Yeah, they got confused. And that's
another thing that UM, people who have been on the
scene of mass whales strandings report is that the whales
often seemed to be disoriented or disorientated, depending on where

(13:25):
you're from. Oh, that's right, wasn't that a thing on
the show? I think it's u kaish is disorientated. Uh
should we take a break now? All right, we'll take
a break, and UM talk a little bit more about
the natural causes and also about potential man made causes,

(14:06):
So Chuck. One thing that you you hit upon, um,
is that the whales are very, very social. Yeah, and
so there's this idea that if one becomes stranded, especially
if this is a leader that's leading a pod, if
they become lost or disoriented, as long as they're stranded,
the other members of the pod, of this extremely social,

(14:26):
tight knit group are going to hang around and stick
with that one. There's also an idea that ones that
they are sick are injured if they go off and
become stranded. That even if the ones that follow them
aren't lost, they're there because of the social bonds, like
they're there to provide support or because they care. It's

(14:49):
called the social caring hypothesis. This idea that whales allow
themselves to become stranded because a member of their pod
has been come stranded and they're worried about them. Basically Yeah.
Uh So obviously there are a lot of people around
the world that care a lot about this and are
trying to work to just learn more about how to

(15:11):
handle this and uh and last year there was a
workshop held to discuss, you know, how to practically handle
these strandings. Uh and so it concluded UM that they
had a uh an International Strandings Network they were going
to establish this, and I guess they're in the process
of doing that now, basically stranding experts from all all

(15:34):
these different countries where it happens. Partnering up was something
called the Entanglement Network UM to basically share information on
best practices and just get a little more organized with
how they can best help this situation. So you know,
it's good that they're doing something about it. One of
the other things that UM very recently, I think within

(15:55):
the last year two has been finally handled was this
longstanding issue of whether or not sonar that's used by
like navies around the world UM it leads to strandings
of whales. Yeah, this was the first time this connection
was made. There was a NATO military exercise off the

(16:18):
coast of Greece which coincided with the stranding of twelve
UH Cuvier's beaked whales. UM. Another one in May two
thousand in the Bahamas UM loud loud mid frequency sonar
stranded a number of whales and for those they did
some UH examinations and found hemorrhaging in them in the

(16:40):
inner ear that indicated acoustic trauma, which is just devastating, right,
And there were NATO or either NATO or U S
Navy sonar exercises that had been conducted right there, right, Yeah.
And then in two thousand two, a group of beaked
whales landed in the Canary Islands and UM, they were

(17:02):
examined and this has raised a really big mystery as well.
Some of them showed signs of what we would call
the bends submersion sickness, which you would not think that
marine mammal would ever have a problem with. No, because
they've developed UM, well they've adapted to be able to
die very quickly and rise very quickly. But they think

(17:23):
that probably something about acute sonar, which is basically just
getting hit by a blast of high frequency, short duration
sound waves UM causes them to either swim away. This
is the current hypothesis. There was a New York Times
article called the Search for Clues to What causes Whale

(17:44):
strandings and UM. It talks about this study that was
published in the Journal of Experimental Biology in two thousand seventeen,
and the study UM, who's carried out by Terry Terry
Williams basically says that sonar goes off nearby some whales
or cetaceans, they try to get away as fast as

(18:05):
they can. As they do, they expand about double the
amount of energy they normally would swimming, and they they
lose oxygen to their brain. In the meantime, carbon dioxide
starts to build, which allows bubbles to form in their tissues,
including their brain, which is bends decompression sickness, which so

(18:26):
it's not like sonar causes the bends, but indirectly, they
think leads to the bends by disrupting that the whale
or cetaceans ability to dive or rise very quickly without
decompression sickness. Yeah, and this um, that study was pretty
important because they I think for for a long time

(18:49):
people just thought, well, they're fish. They can swim endlessly
and it's not a problem because their marine mammals or
fish and they just that's what they do. But it's
sort of a no brainer that they can get tired
just like anything else, and they confirmed that in studies.
You know, if they if they sprint, basically, um, they
are essentially getting tired. And if they're sprinting to avoid sonar,

(19:14):
then that's a problem, and so as a result, the
Navy entered into an agreement to not conduct these trials
or sonar exercises or underwater explosions UM between around Hawaii
or southern California, which are extremely important UM reproducing and

(19:34):
feeding grounds for whales of all types, and there's some
resident populations there. But they finally said, okay, alright, fine,
we're not going to do that anymore around there, which
was a big deal. Yeah, seaquakes or another uh UM
underwater sound UM like really intense thing that can can

(19:55):
affect them beyond sonar. So it's not always just man
made sounds, no, but there another type of man made
sound that's a big problem called chronic underwater noise. That
UM is created by things like UM shipping or industry,
that kind of thing where it's not necessarily this high intensity,
but it's it's pretty much constant, and it can drive

(20:18):
cetaceans nuts because again, like we use our eyes, they
use their ears, and if you have a huge loud
sound or a constant loud sound, it makes it difficult
for you to do things like you know, hit on
a lady whale when you're when it's time to reproduce. Well, yeah,
and we've we've mostly been talking about whales, but there
was this one um anecdotal story of these dolphins short

(20:41):
beaked common dolphin that this one researcher found and this
kind of lends itself to the to the fact that
they will travel together if one of them is hurt.
And this is at the Tife Estuary, West Wales, and
he found these two dolphins on the beach and one
of them was sick. Uh postmortermobile had a heavy long

(21:03):
parasite infection that affected its breathing. But the other one
apparently was not sick but remained close to uh it's
little buddy in distress, like whistling frequently. So um man,
that's just like heartbreaking. It was like ted Ted, stay
with me, his ted Ted's the dying dolphins. Okay, I

(21:25):
thought that was a references something just Ted the dolphin. Yeah, gotcha.
Did you ever hear about the researchers. Surely we've talked
about that, the dolphin researcher who like took acid with dolphins,
like gave acid to dolphins and dropped it himself. I
don't think so build a house, and I think the
Bahamas that could be flooded to the dolphins could come

(21:46):
live in the house with them. M I believe tried
to or successfully. His research assistant did it with the dolphin,
had sex with a dolphins. That's another way to put it.
This is real. I've definitely never heard this story. Yeah,

(22:07):
we I think that one might deserve its own episode.
It's it happened the man who did acid and did
sex with dolphins. I think his research assistant, a female, uh,
did it with dolphins, or at least came close. There
was like a this wasn't a fever dream. It sounds

(22:28):
like it must have seemed like it down in the
Bahamas at the time. Yeah, well, we'll do an episode
on it. Okay, so we It feels like a science
is hot on the trail of cetacean stranding, so figuring
out what causes it. There's a lot of different causes. Yeah,
it's probably all that stuff. I think, probably, um, but

(22:51):
there's a big issue still to be discussed, and that
is that if you have a dolphin stranding or a
whale strain ending, and you've got some that have died naturally,
but you still have some that are alive, what do
you do well. There's this that group in New Zealand
called Project Jonah. They have guidelines for like the average

(23:13):
person of how to how to keep a citation that's
been stranded or beached, how to keep it comfortable, how
to keep it alive. Ye, a dolphin obviously is more savable,
uh and um, more savable, not only because they're smaller,
but there it's frankly, it's an unsafe to go too

(23:35):
close to a beached whale, right. That's why I was
really surprised that this group was putting out guidelines telling
you how to care for a beach to whale. It's
an extremely dangerous thing to get near a beached whale,
especially by the tail. Yeah, I mean an accident can
easily happen. And they're so strong, sure, and they're agitated,
they're scared out of their minds. It's a it's a

(23:57):
dangerous thing. So there's a lot of a lot of
discussion about you know, what do you do well? Some
people say, well, you refloat them, you get them out
there as fast as possible, but it is hard to
do and also to an untrained person, you can't really
spot a gravely injured internally injured citacean just by looking

(24:22):
at it. So you may be pushing it back out
to sea and being like, go go live, when really
they're going going to have a long, prolonged death at
sea because they're dying of internal injuries. The The prevailing idea,
it seems like, at least among scientists, is that you
should probably euthanize, especially a whale. Dolphins, Yeah, you can

(24:45):
probably refloat them. A whale once it becomes beached, it's
probably a goner, so say most scientists that I've come across,
And so you you would euthanize them. But then this
raises the whole issue how do you humanely kill a whale?
Where do you get a guillotine that big? Uh? Yeah,
and you know what, we'll talk about what they've come

(25:06):
up with right after this. All right, So where we

(25:30):
left off was the um Sadly, oftentimes the most humane
thing to do would be to put one of these
whales out of their misery, uh immediately or you know,
as quickly as possible. Uh. And so how do you
do this safely? Um? They've tried a variety of drugs
over the years, UM, some degreater success than others. UM.

(25:52):
One drug they tried was good old phena barbital um.
The problem with feena barbital is that it's uh, it
doesn't just leave the whale immediately. It can It can
stay in the whale system and then go into other
places like a dog. Yeah, it doesn't break down in
the environment. And there was a case of a dog

(26:14):
being fed whale meat and falling into a coma because
of the bar the barbituous that had. I mean, like,
it takes a truckload of barbituous to euthanize a whale, right,
so this dog eating this meat and falling into a coma,
it was to be expected. Luckily the dog recovered after
having its stomach pumped twice. But I mean, what a

(26:35):
cluster of a day that was all around kind of
euthanize a whale and then your dog falls into a
comma when you feed at the whale and you're just
trying to complete the circle of life, you know. Well, yeah,
and don't you need special permission to use fena barbers
all anyway? Yes, it's not like the kind of thing
you can just you know, No, these are like significant drugs.
And actually there was a there's a protocol that was

(26:57):
recently developed and published in the Journal of a sequence
of drug administrations that keep that will kill a whale,
but it will do it very humanely and actually quite safely.
To these very clever scientists figured out how to use
drugs to kill a whale. And it's very much like

(27:17):
the drug cocktail that they give to prisoners in the
United States when UM for the death penalty. Yeah. I
mean it's taken them a while to find the correct
mix of drugs that won't um that are safety use,
that won't agitate the whale further, that will kill them quickly.
Uh So a lot of like kind of experimentation has

(27:39):
gone on, and what they finally came up with was
for drugs uh medas a lamb. I think that's like
at a van okay, thumbs up on that um as
a promosine. I think that's like bear okay, uh excellent

(28:01):
excelazine that's ecstasy and potassium chloride that is UM special
K the cereal and that needs to be administered sequentially.
I believe in that order, correct, Yeah, because one of them,
what was the one with the X uh except excelazine Okay,

(28:23):
so that one excelazine, Yeah, maybe orig is zelazine. Anytime
something starts with three consonants, I just get throne one. Um.
But that if you just give that to a whale,
it's a sedative, I believe. Right. No, it's a pain killer.
I'm sorry. But it can cause thrashing. That is extremely dangerous.
You Like, the whale's tail is already dangerous enough when

(28:45):
it's stranded. If you give it a drug that makes
it involuntarily thrash, you're you're in big trouble. But they
found that if they administer that stuff after the other two,
it won't cause thrashing, but we'll have the pain killing effect. Yeah.
So the medazzolam and the aspromazine. Uh, they use already
in veterinary services for horses and dogs to calm them down.

(29:09):
And you know when when you have a dog put down,
they don't give just one shot. That's a couple of shots.
Yeah yeah, ideally, Yeah, they don't even give humans a
couple of shots these days. Yeah, So they do this,
you know with dogs, they give one to kind of
calm the dog down, and then wanted to stop the heartbeat, right,
and the potassium chloride, the final thing is the one
that stops the whale's heart. I believe. Yes, the exazzoline

(29:31):
is the pain relief and anesthesia, and then that final
potassium chloride is what does it. So the the guys
who came up with this UM protocol also developed needles,
like industrial sized needles that can be used. They're attached
to gardens sprayers. Yeah, that's nuts, right, So you put
all the drugs in these gardens prayers and then you

(29:52):
attach a needle to it. And the great thing about
the needles is that you can insert the needles into
the veins that are around the fins. You don't need
to go near the arteries, which which the main artery
connects the tail of the body. So it's much safer
to administer these drugs because you're working by the fin,
which is much less dangerous than say, working by the tail.
And apparently UM, I don't think that they've actually used

(30:16):
this protocol on any cetacean yet, but UM brand new.
It is brand new, but they they are feeling pretty
pretty good about it, as good as you can feel
about coming up with a cocktail of drugs to kill
a whale. But that's just one way of euthanizing whales.
There's there's other ones. People shoot them with shotguns. Yeah,

(30:38):
they're certainly more primitive attempts. Uh, that are primitive. Yeah,
it is. And and there's actually a protocol for shooting
a whale, and you want to use very high caliber
bullets projectiles, and if you don't, you're just going to
hurt that whale because they have a really really strong skull. Yeah,

(31:00):
that's really tough to penetrate. Um. So there's this thing
that's been developed called the sweed, the sperm whale euthanasia device.
Sperm whales have a very thick goal. They're huge whales,
and this thing is a modified World War two fourteen
point five millimeter Russian anti tank gun that's been developed

(31:21):
just to euthanize sperm whales by shooting them in the
head with this thing. Yeah, I'm gonna go with the
drug cocktail. There's also exanguination, which is if you don't
have a drug cocktail and you've got a whale, you
don't have an anti tank gun, you don't have a
drug cocktail. The the the preferred method is to exanguinate

(31:42):
the whale by cutting that major artery that connects the
tail to its body and basically just letting it bleed out,
which is sad, but it's better than dying while your
skin is is burning off, you know. Uh. And so
we'll finish with um kind of the problem of what
to do with that dead whale. Uh. And something that

(32:04):
happened in November nineteen seventy November twelve, specifically in Oregon.
A lot of people think that it was a made
up story that they blew up a whale, but it
really happened, right, And there's actually grainy footage of it
on YouTube seventy news footage from w no k A

(32:28):
t U t V right because it's west right, so
it's k oh is that what that is? W's the east,
Kay is the west? I never knew that. Uh. So
you've got um an eight ton forty ft long sperm whale.
This from Snopes correct. Yes, um. And apparently snobs did
the real research because there was this long published article

(32:50):
that everyone kind of referenced over and over as people
do on the internet. UM, and they realized, you're, like,
no one ever really called the people that actually did this,
so let's do that. And they did talked to a
guy named Ed because it kept coming up on the
internet and people thought it was number one and it
just happened, and then number two that it was a
hoax and an urban legend and an actual urban legend

(33:10):
developed out of the real thing. Correct. But the real
story is that on November twel eight to forty ft
long sperm whale which was dead, washed up on in Florence, Oregon,
and um it was. You know, a dead whale eventually
will smell a lot. That's a big problem. And not

(33:33):
only that, it's it poses a big problem. And that
if if you have a whale that's like still partially
in the surf, those sharks come of calling to feed
on it, and they'll attack anything around there. So it's
a huge public health problem if you have a big
dead whale on your beach. Ye. So, um, they think, like,

(33:54):
all right, we need to get rid of the thing.
What do we do? Who do we call? Um? The
Oregon Beaches Public right of Way. So oddly enough, they
went to the State Highway Division to clean this up.
Uh So they consulted the Department of the Navy, and
the Navy said blow it up. Yeah. This guy named
George Thornton was the guy whose shoulders that fell on.

(34:16):
He was with the Highway Division, and he was like,
all right, we'll blow it up. I mean they it
made sense of the time they blew up huge boulders
that weighed about the same and that's how they that's
the what they used to calculate how much dynamite to
blow this whale up. Yeah, I mean, in the weirdest way,
it did make sense. It totally did. Like they calculated

(34:37):
that they would need a half a ton of dynamite
twenty crates worth, and they thought, well, if we stuff
this stuff on the landward side of the whale, it'll
blow it out to see how to see. Basically, no
must know, fuss gonna blow it the smithereens and we'll
just leave it for the seagulls and you know, the crabs.
And I think the quote was the crabs and the

(34:57):
seagulls and what not to eat the tiny particles of blubber,
Like you said, no fuss, no must. So on November twelve, uh,
there were a group of a couple dozen onlookers who
came to see this. Word got out around Florence, Oregon
that they were going to blow a whale up. That
was a pretty fun thing to do in Florence, Oregon

(35:19):
that day, right, so people people came out to see
Channel two ka t used. Paul Lindman reported on the scene,
and he did the whole thing, very tongue in cheap.
This is right out of the gate. They're gonna blow
a whale up with half a ton of dynamite. This
guy got the hilarious nous inherent in the idea right
out of Anchorman pretty much. Uh, And so he called

(35:43):
it and everybody went and hid behind the dunes about
a quarter of a mile away, not far enough. No,
they blew the thing and you got to see this
footage just just look up exploding whale on YouTube. It
was a huge explosion and everybody's watching and they're like, yeah,
somebody goes we and then all of a sudden they're

(36:03):
like oh some I think a woman says, oh God,
as whale parts just start raining down on everybody. Yeah,
it's like that scene in Tremors when they finally blew
up one of the tremors and they just start, you know,
getting Of course in Tremors, it was that kind of
orange blood orange pulp, one of the grab boids. So

(36:23):
they were called that's what. Oh well, that's what the
the store owner, the little store owner guy called them.
They were trying to think of what he called me.
He's like, what about grab boids? Great movie? Um? Yeah,
So it basically rained down whale blubber. Uh, some in
larger pieces than others. And it's remarkable nobody got hurt

(36:45):
because a three foot by five ft piece landed on
a buick owned by Walter uman Hoffer and they showed
the car. It crushed his car. Had he been sitting
in there, he would have been dead as a doornail. Like,
it's really lucky no one got killed. Yeah, that could
have squashed somebody easy, sure. And so everybody is sitting

(37:07):
there wiping whale blubber and guts and and gristle off
of their faces and they look over and most of
the whale is still there. It definitely vaporized part of
the whale, but most of it was still there. So
they just buried it on the beach, which is one
thing you can do with the whale. You can bury
it on the beach. You can take it to a
lion fill. You can drag it out to see that's

(37:28):
the preferred thing, but out and then let it, let
it sink, which is the natural thing. There's something called
a whale fall which creates like a temporary ecosystem on
the seafloor that attracts a bunch of different organisms that
eat the whale. Right. Um, But it's illegal in the
US to to tow a whale that's been put down

(37:50):
with barbiturous out to sea because remember those don't break down,
so you've got secondary toxicity. So if you put a
whale down with the cocktail in the US, you have
to render it, burn it, or bury it in the landfill.
You can't take it out to sea. But if you
just shoot in the head, you can drag it out
to sea and and let it. Say, there's a lot

(38:11):
of math to be done with dragging it out to
sea because ostensibly you would tie a rope around its tail,
pull it out where it would drag along the sea floor. Well,
hopefully it would float, would it, Sure it wouldn't. The
reason why is another reason why a dead whale is
super dangerous because as they decompose, gas builds up, just

(38:32):
like they do in a decomposing human, and then they
explode on their own sometimes too that you don't want
to be standing near either all right, So I guess
it has to float because otherwise eventually it would start
pulling that boat down with it, at which point you
would definitely want to cut bait. Yes, literally, you got

(38:52):
anything else? No, it's um it's a very sad thing,
and I'm glad that there are people who dedicate their
lives to this kind of thing. Yeah, if you're into that,
If you hear that as a call and go check
out Project Jonah's website. They will be right up your alley.
You'll probably end up moving to New Zealand, which I
can attest is a great, great place to visit. I
want to go. It's great, And I hear it's friendly

(39:15):
and safe. Yes, and like i've heard it compared to
like the United States in the nineteen fifties as far
as like friendliness and safety. Yeah, and just sort of
a bit of a throwback in like the best ways.
That's what friends of mine have said. Or maybe they
just mean everyone's drunk all day long, maybe and uh,

(39:37):
doing drugs and having a good time. This is all
that happened in the fifties. There's a town in there
that was built in art like completely art deco in
the nineteen thirties. But they're talking about that they use
art deco to to describe it. No, this is just
New Zealand as a whole. Okay, well check it out.
We'll have to go there on tour someday. Absolutely. Okay. Well,
since I said we'll go there on tour someday, it's

(39:59):
time for listening email. I'm gonna call this general email
of interest. That's a good one. Hello, Josh, Chuck, and Jerry.
I cannot remember the name of the podcast where there's
a crazy doctor. I remember what this was, Um, not
Uncle Shlomo Um who got run out of multiple towns,

(40:20):
starts up multiple practices and possibly loses his license multiple times.
I know if I could remember exactly what he was
doing to get run out of these towns, I would
remember the podcast. But the right page of twenty it
is lost. Do you remember it? No? I was hoping
that you would know and that we could delight this listener.
I think this guy's confusing us with stuff to blow
your mind. What's the lady? I think? Do you think

(40:45):
I don't know? It happens from time it's hot. I'm
gonna finish the email anyway. Um, I know that It's
on my list of favorites amongst Satanic Panic of the eighties,
great one, Operation Mincemeat another good one, how Bars work,
to listen to public Relations and Kitty genevese Boy, those
are all some of my favorites too. Uh. And of

(41:07):
course the time you guys partied with Billy Boy Gates.
That was a great party. Uh. You guys always brighten
my day and lead me to become a person whose
slogan is so I heard on this podcast dot dot
dot there's a t shirt. I'm an architecture student from
Auburn University War Eagle even if you don't want to Tigers. Uh. Yeah, see,

(41:30):
that's just weird dumb to make up your mind Auburn. Uh.
And I've listened to you all to keep me going
through countless late hours, early mornings and days. But I
don't ever leave my studio desk. Also, I have forced
many of my classmates to listen to you. Shout out
to fellow listener and classmate Corey Subsessic pronounced Sue Basic

(41:53):
Subsassic and not through all kinds of letters in there,
Corey Sue Basic if you read the son the listener mail. Uh,
shout out Corey and I always suggest I always suggest
the Satanic Panic as the first episode. That's a good starter. Yeah,
I agree. Anyway, guys, please help me remember my favorite
episode and have just a remarkable day. Best of luck

(42:15):
to you all in your perspective children and spouses. I
don't think she means perspective children. Does she thinks she's
been in architecture too long. That's a perspective. Children mean
children that have yet to be born. I don't think
that's happening anytime soon. Uh. That is from Olivia Barrett,
she says, signed note Birmingham, Alabama would love to have you.

(42:37):
We performed in Birmingham. It was a great show. It
was a great show. Maybe we'll come back in day
to the great work play eater there. It's a very
warm reception. Um, I can't remember. So what I'm hoping
is someone writes in to about the crazy doctor who
got run out of multiple town start to multiple practices
and possibly was this his license multiple times? So idea,

(43:00):
So I mean, not a clue. If anyone can remember
that and write and tell us will answer Lidia back
again on the air and then read jrtan Now, oh well,
there you go. That's a heck of a deal. Chair.
You know. Well, if you have Livia's answer, you can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can also hang out with me. I'm at josh um
Clark on Twitter. You can I Alway Chuck on Facebook

(43:22):
at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, the
How Stuff Works dot com and as always, too us
to home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
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