It’s an emotional morning on the beach in white rock where a humpback whale was found beached this morning east of the pier.
No official word yet here at white rock but everybody returning from taking a look at the whale on the beach says it has now been declared dead.
There are throngs of people right now surrounding the whale.
The tide is out about a mile from the shoreline and the whale is several hundred feet away from the water.
It is located east of the pier about 2 or 3 miles in fact.
People are still arriving with buckets in hand, children in hand, and lots of RCMP members are now arriving on the scene.
People are just hoping that it’s still not too late to form a bucket brigade to pour water on the whale but from all indicators the whale actually died apparently about an hour ago.
Reporter Janet Brown caught up with this woman on the beach, carrie, and here’s what she told our reporter.
“Oh well its weird. People are getting their picture taken with it and smiling and doing the peace sign. Yah, it’s kind of strange.
Did you ever get a chance to be part of a bucket brigade to dump water on it or was it too late for that?
It was too late, yah. People were already leaving with their buckets by the time we got down here.
Are there any experts out there right now saying how long the whale might have been there for? No, there’s a couple of RCMP officers but we never saw anybody else.
How are you feeling after witnessing this?
Well it’s sad, it shouldn’t happen but….”
And with that Carrie ended up in tears after the interview, very upset by what she witnessed. Very traumatized by it.
This whale is a baby whale and had been swimming in the bay the past couple of weeks now so a very sad ending to this story.
Department of Fisheries and Oceans marine mammal coordinator, Paul Cottrell, says calls started coming in about the beached whale early this morning.
“There was gear trailing it. The RCMP officers were able to remove the gear that was around the animal and through the mouth.”
Cottrell adds, expert marine mammal pathologist, Dr. Stephen Raverty, will be taking a look at the whale — to get the official word on what went wrong.
This was found near the whale
Rear view of the whale
Front view of the whale
Side view (courtesy of Lea Sheilds)
Crowd gathered around the whale
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