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back to article San Diego Baywatch rules out exploding dead whale

A dead beached whale in San Diego is going to be sticking around for another few days as authorities wait for better tides to help them shift the 50-foot (15m) cetacean. The fin whale, which was discovered on Saturday at 2pm local time by workers from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, probably won't be shifted until …

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  1. davemcwish
    Coat

    50-foot fish

    Mammal surely ?

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ignoring the '50-foot (15m) fish' error

    It seems something of a wasted opportunity not to blow it up. How often do you get a massive target at a convenient beachside location just around the corner from the US Navy Pacific Fleet who own so much highly entertaining death tech?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Local Colour

      There's a jet fuel pipeline running under parts of Point Loma.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Like that's a bad thing.

        I get all my environmental credentials from the Michael Bay school.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          A good thing.

          Now that I've moved out of Point Loma ... fire away!

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  3. Adze

    Here come pieces of...

    ...my God!

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  4. mike 32
    FAIL

    Wow

    Thank you for that HILARIOUS clip. Ah, the good old days, of apparently little forethought.

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    1. laird cummings
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Back in the days...

      ...when Larry, Moe, and Curly ran the Whale Disposal unit of the Highway Dept.

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  5. The Serpent
    Thumb Up

    Takes me back to 1997,,

    ..the first ever movie file I downloaded. It's raining blubber, hallelujah.

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    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      I always wondered about the Insurance claims:

      "I left my car parked and it got landed on by a heavily singed chunk of whale."

      Do exploding whales affect your no-claims bonus?

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    2. TRT Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Whales, no. The Welsh, yes.

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  6. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Holmes

    Bury it

    Us Oregonians have learned from our experiences. Now we simply dig a trench on the beach and push in the whale. All the little microbes go to work and a year later the whale is gone. We then dig up the bones and donate them to a local museum. Oh, and there is a boom in the crab population too.

    Towing out to sea doesn't work that well. Sometimes the whale breaks during the tow. Or it washes back up on shore. But it does make for entertaining news.

    And hauling to a landfill?? Right. Because it won't smell there, it will only smell when decomposing on a beach. Plus someone gets the wonderful task of carving up the beast to fit into the dump trucks.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I will never tire

    of watching that video

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  8. Peter Simpson 1
    Coat

    Exploding whale video

    Never gets old. Destined to enter video hall of fame along with "Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse".

    //the one with the Oscar in the pocket, of course...

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  9. lemmac

    Why only wasteful options?

    When there are whole industries built on the goodies that a whale can provide... that whale is probably worth over $10,000 to the right person, endangered or not it's dead already... pack it in ice and ship it to Iceland.

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    1. John 62
      Reply Icon

      dead from what?

      I presume you mean sending it Iceland for meat, but it's not fit for the human food chain if it wasn't slaughtered by humans. Maybe you could get a few pallets of pet food out of it, though.

      On the other hand, the bones and other by-products might well be useful for glue and whatever else the whale industry used to extract from them.

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  10. sabba
    Pirate

    Erm!

    "seagulls kept away by the smell"? How about blown to bits with the whale.

    God bless America.

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  11. technome
    Go

    They don't write 'em like that any more...

    "The blast blaster blubber beyond all believable bounds!"

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  12. Chris Seiter

    PETA?

    Where's PETA in all of this? Maybe since the animal is already dead or it wasn't that cute when it was alive they don't care?

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good, can't have a dead whale smell overpowering the shit smell from the waste water plant.

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  14. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    Quality..

    .. just quality. That video is *epic*.. Applaus, and thanks..

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    1. laird cummings
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      I particulalry like the 'splut-splut-splut' sound of falling ballistic blubber bits - Such a wonderfully cartoon-ish sound.

      :)

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  15. Armando 123
    Devil

    Dave Barry

    I remember reading about the Oregon whale in a Dave Barry column (back when he was funny) about twenty years ago. Just as hilarious as he said!

    Thank you, el Reg, for making us laugh at love. Again.(C)

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  16. laird cummings
    Thumb Up

    Dave Barry would approve

    His column on the original exploding whale is side-splitting. No doubt, he'd approve of the lower-key disposal, this time.

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  17. Mike Flugennock
    Mushroom

    What do you MEAN, they're not going to blow it up?

    Bah, Sissies.

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  18. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    I say we take off and...

    Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!!

    (Yes, an overused quote on the Reg, but it's fitting and all I have right now)

    Ten bucks says that whale falls apart when they try to tow it away, and then there are scraps of whale washing up for miles in all directions.

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  19. kain preacher

    Sure blow it up, but this time use C4. If the blast from the C4 does not do the trick the secondary and much bigger blaster from the petroleum pipe lines should do the the trick. Of course it might take a larger section of the city with it but hey it's worth it. Google Texas city explosion to see what happens when a refinery blows .

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  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not forgetting . . .

    that if they leave it too long it could blow itself up - anyone else seen "Nature's Giants"?

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  21. sebacoustic

    polar bears

    There's some cool footage on the Beeb's latest "Frozen Planet" episode of a few Polar bears doing their bit to disposeof a beached finn whale. Presumably in the arctic it doesn't go off so quickly.

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    1. laird cummings
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Bears don't care

      Even if it does 'go off,' that's just an enticing aroma to them; eau de Rottenwhale - available at finer beaches everywhere.

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    2. kain preacher
      Reply Icon

      It's also keeps it refrigerated so the bears can eat for a long time.

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  22. kryptonaut
    Coffee/keyboard

    Ow ow ow my sides hurt!

    I can't believe I've never seen that video before. Utterly brilliant!

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  23. ElNumbre
    Stop

    Mother Trucker..

    Be careful about trucking away that beast. I've seen stories of dead whales being towed to their disposal point, but the carcass being unable to contain the gas and going 'pop' in the city streets.

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    1. Evil Genius
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      In Taiwan

      Must have been like an All-you-can-eat-buffet.

      Mines the one with sperm whale in the pocket for later

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    2. TRT Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Eurgh, you eat sperm?

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  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Buried whales do not always rot

    Depends on the soil. They buried one on the east coast of Canada some years back and dug it up last summer for the skeleton. Instead they found most of it intact -- a whole of degreasing went on.

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