The carcass of a whale that beached itself in Venice, Florida, final weekend, was towed again out to sea this week, and the proprietor of a marine help firm captured video of sharks feeding on the leviathan — after towing it out to sea.
Capt. Craig Marcum, proprietor of Sea Tow Venice, instructed Fox Information Digital that he rushed to the seaside after getting an alert {that a} whale was stranded off the coast on Sunday.
“The seas were very rough — they were three to four feet, and the waves were breaking right at the whale on the sandbar,” Marcum stated.
He stated he circled the whale in his boat and made eye contact with the mammal a number of occasions.
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Capt. Craig Marcum, proprietor of Sea Tow Venice in Florida, stated he felt “helpless” when the whale was first beached as a result of specialists stated towing it again to sea whereas it was nonetheless alive may very well be harmful for the animal and for his crew. (Sea Tow Venice)
“Making eye contact with the whale was just hard to describe,” Macum stated. “I had a helpless feeling, because soon after, a woman named Denise who is a whale stranding expert was on scene, and she said that it’s not a good idea to try to tow this whale. It’ll probably fracture its spine. It might sink your boat. It might kill you.”
Marcum stated they have been compelled to attend to assist the whale, including that the mammal “didn’t look right,” though he’s not a whale skilled, and wasn’t certain if it was sick.
Marcum stated the water finally received so tough that the sheriff’s division had to return ashore, “and then we came by land and stayed until dark and then, of course, by the next morning the whale had passed” and so they have been capable of begin making ready to tow it after the necropsy was carried out.
A shark feasts on a whale carcass off the coast of Venice, Fla. (Capt. Craig Marcum / Sea Tow Venice)
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Aided by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Workplace, Marcum and his Sea Tow vessel towed the deceased whale 15 miles off the Gulf Coast in the course of the subsequent excessive tide on Tuesday. The subsequent day, they returned to the carcass to verify nobody was tampering with it, and that it wasn’t coming again ashore. That is when Marcum stated he noticed “multiple tiger sharks feeding on the carcass.”
Marcum stated his firm is partnered with the Mote Marine Laboratory, who headed the beaching incident and the necropsy, including that he was “impressed by their professionalism and their respect for the whale.”
Watching their staff do the necropsy was like “watching a skilled surgeon at work,” Marcum stated. “I was just kind of blown away by how incredible their skills were and how they knew exactly what to do every step of the way.”
The whale was stranded on a sandbar about 50 yards from shore, officers stated. (Venice Municipal Authorities)
Gretchen Lovewell of Mote Marine Laboratory instructed FOX 13: “It’s a gut punch. You know, we get into this because we desperately love animals, but we have to put human safety first and when you have an animal this big thrashing in the surf, the kind of surf we had yesterday, it’s a gut punch. We want to help so badly. We sat out here all day yesterday waiting for that opportunity and, unfortunately, it never came.”
Marcum instructed FOX 13 that taking the whale again to the water was the “best possible” final result of the scenario after the whale died.
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“We could have had a situation where they cut the whale up and took it to a landfill. That would have been terrible,” he stated. “We know there was a possibility of burying it on the beach once again. That is kind of a waste, but taking it offshore and letting the cycle of life complete itself and knowing that it was creating life for tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other creatures, maybe even millions, kind of set us at ease knowing that was happening.”
