Volunteers poured water over a stranded humpback whale near Waldport on Wednesday August 14, 2019.
A young humpback whale that beached itself on the Oregon coast will have to be euthanized after rescue efforts to get the whale back into the ocean failed, officials said Thursday.
The animal, a 22-foot-long juvenile, was first reported Wednesday morning, and the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network, based at Oregon State University, responded with a team to try to care for the animal.
The weight of a whale can crush their internal organs if they spend too much time out of the water and the crews had hoped the cetacean would be able to return to the ocean with high tide. Volunteers dug a pit around the whale, covered it in towels to prevent sunburn and poured buckets of water over the animal to keep it cool.
Shelby Tilden, an attorney who lives in Waldport, heard about the beached creature Wednesday evening. She’s always had an affinity for whales, admiring both their size and their gentle nature. She headed down to the beach around 6 p.m. and helped experts from the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center keep the animal hydrated by fetching buckets of water from the surf to be poured over the whale.
“It was pretty sad,” she said. “It was just laying there and every couple minutes it would breath or flap its fluke to let us know it was still alive. There wasn’t much more we could do.”
By Thursday morning, two high tides had come and gone — one midday Wednesday and another shortly after midnight — but the whale remained stranded.
Tricia Howe, operations manager at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, stayed at the site overnight and watched as the whale tried to ride the surf back out to open water.
“The whale is definitely a fighter. Several times it was facing the ocean and working its way closer, as well as rolling toward the ocean,” Howe said in a statement. “However, when it stopped to rest, the powerful waves pushed it back up on the sand. Due to the extremely high tide last night, it is now even closer to the dunes.”
Judging from its size, experts believe the whale to be between four and six months old. At that age, it would have just been weaned from its mother, a stressful time for humpback whales when many of the juveniles perish.
Around 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, officials said that it was unlikely the next high tide would be enough to the animal back into the water and, to prevent the creature from suffering further, it would be humanely euthanized.
An autopsy would be performed on the animal Thursday afternoon, which experts hope will shed some light on how it became stranded. Once the autopsy is completed, the whale will likely be buried on the beach.
