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Beached whale completes circle of life offshore
Sharks are feeding on a 44-foot whale that died after beaching itself off the Venice coastline on Sunday.
VENICE, Fla. - The circle of life was evident this week after a deceased whale was towed out to sea.
Video from Craig Marcum, the owner of Sea Tow Venice, shows sharks feeding on the 44-foot creature after it was taken to its final resting place.
Marcum says he was notified on Sunday morning that a whale had beached itself about 150 yards off the Venice coastline.
"It was really rough," Marcum shared. "The conditions were terrible. I was able to make several close passes by the whale’s head and kind of make eye contact with the whale a few times, which is very emotional. The way it looked, and you could tell it was in some distress. Right away, I could tell it didn’t look right. The skin looked kind of dimpled."
A 44-foot whale died off the coast of Venice after stranding itself.
Though marine biologists desperately wanted to save the animal, the conditions were too treacherous, and the whale died the next day.
"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."
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An excavator was used to bring the whale to the shoreline where marine biologists conducted a necropsy on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
"We expected to maybe see sharks overnight with the necropsy going on and all the blood in the water," Marcum said.
A crowd gathers on a beach in Venice after a 44-foot sperm whaled beached itself.
Sea Tow began towing the whale out to sea on Tuesday afternoon, escorted by law enforcement officials.
"I know that the drone operator was able to see some sharks right around the beach as we were hooking up and towing it," Marcum stated.
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He said that the whale was left about 15 miles offshore shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
The next day, Marcum went to check on the whale carcass.
"We got on scene, and it was like nothing I had ever seen in my life. I take that back. I have seen it on National Geographic or Discovery Channel. I’ve seen footage like this, but 15-20 individual Tiger Sharks. Some 2-3-4 at a time, taking bites out of it. Some coming completely out of the water, their entire bodies out of the water, launching themselves on top of the whale to get a good bite."
Sharks are feeding on a whale that was taken about 15 miles offshore after beaching itself earlier this week.
"That’s why I say this is the best possible situation," Marcum explained. "We could have had a situation where they cut the whale up and took it to a landfill. That would have been terrible. 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."
"I’m sure there were tears of sadness, but there were tears of joy because we were seeing this whale returned back to its origins. For that whale to be able to get back to the ocean and complete its lifecycle was kind of a happy event for us, but definitely the last 24 hours 36 hours has been a bag of emotions for me, and I think it has been for most of the people at NOAA and Mote Marine."
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