{"id":910375,"date":"2026-09-30T00:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T00:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910375\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T00:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T00:10:11","slug":"how-will-city-beach-get-rid-of-its-whale-carcass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910375\/","title":{"rendered":"How will City Beach get rid of its whale carcass?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out, removing tonnes of organic material from a beach isn’t an easy task.<\/p>\n

Just ask the Town of Cambridge in Perth.<\/p>\n

When a dead 13-metre-long whale, weighing an estimated 31 tonnes, washed ashore at City Beach in the early hours of Monday morning<\/a>, a public holiday no less, the council has no easy fix.<\/p>\n

As the sun rose, the carcass decayed, and the waves carried its scent into open waters, luring sharks toward one of Perth’s most popular beaches and closing it to swimmers.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Crowds have descended on the beach to look at the carcass. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Disposing of whale carcasses is a logistical ordeal. It’s heavy, stinky, and expensive.<\/p>\n

Experts say this is how it should, and shouldn’t, be done.<\/p>\n

An explosive solution<\/p>\n

One method officials probably won’t consider was put into practice a few decades ago in the town of Florence in the US state of Oregon.<\/p>\n

About 20 cases of dynamite, or 450 kilograms’ worth, was used to dispose of a much smaller whale carcass, with predictable results.<\/p>\n

Chunks of blubber flew into the air, and a car parked almost half a kilometre away was caved in by falling debris.<\/p>\n

Granted, it was the 1970s, and the world learned a lot from that one experience, namely, don’t blow up whale carcasses.<\/p>\n

Western Australia, however, recently used much smaller explosive charges to humanely euthanase sick or stranded whales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Modern disposal methods<\/p>\n

The prevailing wisdom is to tow carcasses back out to sea or carry them to the dump, according to University of Western Australia marine biologist Kate Sprogis.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kate Sprogis says the whale’s death was not unusual, as it happened during the migration season. (ABC News: Cason Ho)<\/p>\n

“If it’s a big swell, big weather, big wind, and they can’t get a boat out or a large enough boat to tow it, then landfill might be an option,” Dr Sprogis said.<\/p>\n

How do you get rid of a rotting whale? <\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers and wildlife authorities say disposal of mammoth bodies is a complicated process after a humpback was carefully loaded onto a truck and buried at the Geraldton tip.<\/p>\n

Regardless, it’s likely to be expensive, as Town of Cambridge Mayor Gary Mack said he has been warned.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2014, it cost $188,000 to clean up a whale carcass on Scarborough Beach. Then-mayor Giovanni Italiano convinced the state government to pay half.<\/p>\n

But typically, the local council foots the bill, and the longer it takes to get rid of the mess, the longer the beach needs to stay closed.<\/p>\n

“Any sort of large animal like that, full of blubber, is really attractive for sharks,” Dr Sprogis said.<\/p>\n

Loading…Migration season<\/p>\n

The lone whale carcass on City Beach’s shores isn’t an unexpected occurrence, according to Dr Sprogis, who said the months of September and October are typically a time of migration for humpback whales.<\/p>\n

Council requests explosive solution to rotting whale carcass<\/a><\/p>\n

A coastal shire in WA suggests blowing up a rotting whale carcass, saying it cannot afford to dispose of the whale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“During this time, there’s a whole range of reasons why some of them end up dying,” she said.<\/p>\n

Dr Sprogis said a necropsy is typically required to determine the cause of death, but if there aren’t obvious signs of trauma on the carcass, the whale could have died from natural causes.<\/p>\n

“When they die, they generally float on the surface. Their body gets filled with gases,” she said.<\/p>\n

“If there’s, say, a big wind, say a westerly wind, it might push the animals onto the shore if they’re floating.”<\/p>\n

The death of a whale isn’t all bad, and carcasses can still yield important samples for researchers.<\/p>\n

But Dr Sprogis warned that decomposition was a problem.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Carcasses provide researchers with valuable samples. (ABC News: Courtney Withers)<\/p>\n

“As soon as it starts decomposing and breaking down, that’s when the number of samples is reduced, because a lot of analysis in the lab can only be done with fresh samples,” she said.<\/p>\n

The dead whale, which has drawn hundreds of onlookers over the past two days, is expected to be removed from the beach this morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It turns out, removing tonnes of organic material from a beach isn’t an easy task. Just ask the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,198028,17158,478448,46,478449,128,478450,25962,93254,478447,338],"class_list":["post-910375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-city-beach","tag-dead-whale","tag-dead-whale-at-perth-beach","tag-perth","tag-perth-whale","tag-science","tag-town-of-cambridge","tag-wa","tag-whale-carcass","tag-whale-city-beach","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}