Burying whale on beach at Sandy Cove

While alive, whales are the responsibility of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, but if dead and on a shore, they become the local municipality’s expense, said deputy clerk Gordon Wilson.

He said he doesn’t understand Ottawa’s rationale for that.

The whale died at least 10 weeks ago because the municipality first began tracking reports of its floating body about that time. It grounded in Sandy Cove on the Bay of Fundy side after the Feb. 9-10 weekend, and officials waited to see whether high moon tides Feb. 21 would float it back to sea.

“We just waited to see if it would continue up the coast,” Wilson said.

When it became apparent the whale’s body was going nowhere, the municipality hired the contractor to bury the carcass on the beach. Approval was given by the province’s Department of Natural Resources and DFO.

It was a DFO scientist who identified the whale as a humpback, but Wilson was uncertain whether fisheries scientists had any interest in the whale and the cause of its death.

A right whale would have attracted much more attention, he said.

East Ferry resident Harold Rowe wrote recently that he inspected the whale’s body Feb. 12 and said it didn’t appear to have been struck by a ship, the cause of many whale injuries and deaths in the Bay of Fundy.

“There is a wound by the tail but this may have happened after it died,” Rowe said.

He added that many local residents like to walk the beach in both summer and winter and he hoped that the whale’s body would not be left to rot away right where it was.

As the beach was being prepared for the whale’s burial, two local women held a small service for the animal, using a smudge pot to acknowledge its passing.