Venice beached whale: Swim advisory lifted after dead whale towed out to sea
VENICE, Fla. - A beach in Venice is back open to swimmers after a whale stranded itself and died earlier this week.
The city of Venice lifted a no swim advisory for beaches from Caspersen to the South Jetty on Wednesday morning.
The no swim advisory was put in place on Monday because officials were worried about the potential for sharks to be in the water off Service Club Park due to body fluids and blood from the dead whale on the shoreline.
READ: Beached whale dies after stranding itself off Venice coast: ‘It’s heartbreaking'
The 44-foot, 70,000-pound sperm whale beached itself about 150 yards offshore on Sunday morning. While marine biologists say they desperately wanted to help the animal, conditions in the Gulf were too treacherous for humans to help it.
A 44-foot whale died off the coast of Venice after stranding itself.
"It’s a gut punch," Gretchen Lovewell, Mote Marine Laboratory stranding investigations program manager stated. "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."
The whale died the next day.
READ: Whale that vanished from Atlantic over 200 years ago spotted off Massachusetts: 'Shouldn't exist'
An excavator pulled the deceased animal onto the shoreline on Monday and scientists began a necropsy, or an animal autopsy, on the whale to figure out what happened. They say it will take about 8–12 weeks for lab results to come back.
A crowd gathers on a beach in Venice after a 44-foot sperm whaled beached itself.
"Anytime we have animals that come in like this, especially when they are alive, and we can’t get to it and help it, it’s heartbreaking," Lovewell shared. "It’s a gut punch. We desperately wanted to get to it yesterday, but we just simply couldn’t do it safely. Now, we’re putting on our science hats to make the best of a bad situation, to make sure this animal doesn’t die in vain and we can learn as much as we can from this animal and hopefully help the rest of them that are out there."
They wrapped up the necropsy on Tuesday morning and Sea Tow towed the whale’s carcass 10–15 miles out to sea in the afternoon.
Officials say the no swim advisory was lifted because there has been a full tidal cycle since the whale was removed.
Sperm whales are an endangered species. Lovewell said they get about two whales a year along the entire Gulf Coast.
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