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Videos: 60,000 Pound Whale Carcass Gets Cut Up And Trucked Off To The Landfill �?�
Imagine you're the person responsible for keeping San Onofre State Beach clean and usable for the general public. Usually your job isn't too hard, mostly limited to making sure visitors don't leave their garbage on the sand.
But imagine the instant headache caused by information that the 60,000-pound, 40-foot long carcass of a California gray whale had washed up on Lower Trestles beach and was beginning to decompose.
This is the position Kevin Pearsall, a public safety superintendent for California state parks in Orange County, found himself in last Sunday when a large, dead, gray whale did indeed wash up on the beach he is partially responsible for stewarding. While the whale, at first, was somewhat a curiosity—an attraction for instagraming visitors to gawk at—five days of decomposition is quickly turning the animal's body into an immensely smelly, objectively disgusting mess that needs to be cleaned up ASAP.
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While state officials initially considered towing the whale's carcass back out to sea, they've since decided to remove the remains "by land" because tidal movements would likely just send the whale back onto shore, the L.A. Times reported on Wednesday.
"By land" is simply a nice way of saying cutting up the carcass with construction equipment, loading the remains into trucks and carting it off to a nearby landfill.
"We continue to recommend that everybody stay away," said Pearsall to the L.A. Times on Thursday morning, emphasizing that the site is not particularly spectator friendly, especially for children.
The whale-removal work has been tasked to an emergency contractor, and will cost approximately $30,000 in total.
But again, "It's going to be something you can't un-see" said State Parks Superintendent Rich Haydon to the OC Register. "It's not going to be pretty."
It really isn't. OC Register reporter Jeff Gritchen is documenting the process on Twitter. Take a look below. Or don't, it's pretty unsettling. �?��?��?�
Getting rid of the tail #trestles @ocregister pic.twitter.com/lIHWqtWVNm
— Jeff Gritchen (@jeffgritchen) April 28, 2016
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Cutting up the whale #trestles @ocregister pic.twitter.com/BR9i4pYOMN
— Jeff Gritchen (@jeffgritchen) April 28, 2016
Prepping the whale #trestles @ocregister pic.twitter.com/YY5TFsggbB
— Jeff Gritchen 🇺🇸 (@jeffgritchen) April 28, 2016
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