Storm washes fin whale on to Mayo beach: ‘We might never know what killed this gentle giant’

Little renovation work has been done at Doolough Lodge because of the recent storm that threw the peninsula into a state of hibernation for an entire week. What remains now is to clear the detritus left in its aftermath.

Every window for miles was put to the test as Storm Jocelyn hurled gusts of 130km/h straight in from the Atlantic. Force 12, to those unfamiliar with the Beaufort scale, is considered a hurricane. Funnelled over the watery expanse between Achill Island and Blacksod Bay, not a soul stirred here for days; that’s the trade-off for deciding to live here at the edge of the world.

On the morning before the tempest, a ping on the phone brought news of a dead whale on a WhatsApp group to alert Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) rescue volunteers.

Armed with a sampling kit and saw – to cut baleen (the comb-like teeth the whale uses for filtering) – I joined three other members of the IWDG, one of whom I’d met on a live stranding training programme.

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The first task was to measure what turned out to be a female fin whale, the second-largest species on earth. It was huge at 20.7m (almost 68ft) with a fluke (tail fin) more than 4m wide.

Emaciated and battered from being repeatedly bashed over rocks, the sad scene was a bloodbath.

DNA samples are now with the Natural History Museum in Dublin, where Dr Amy Geraghty oversees the Irish cetacean (meaning mammals such as whales, dolphins and porpoises) tissue bank. Established by the museum and the IWFG, the success of the “island-wide citizen science project,” Dr Geraghty says, “has proved vital for marine biodiversity research”.

More than 1,000 samples (from dead cetaceans) have been collected in the bank since 2006, thanks to people all over Ireland reporting strandings while walking on beaches. Last year, 376 of these creatures were stranded in Ireland, with Mayo having 42 alone, says the IWDG – an NGO which is the official Government-supported whale, dolphin, porpoise and sea turtle recording scheme.

[ The Doolough Diaries: Dream of uncovering Blacksod pink granite dashed by pneumatic hammer ]

Many strandings occur on the east coast too – mostly harbour porpoise and common dolphins – but, thankfully, most well animals are rescued and sent back to sea.

We might never come to know what killed this gentle giant, though: “A full autopsy is not funded by the Government and a postmortem of an animal this size is enormous – like doing one on four elephants – they have numerous stomachs and that’s before you start on the liver and other organs,” explains Gemma O’Connor, Live Stranding Network co-ordinator. But the tissue samples we took from muscle, blubber and the blowhole, (now in a freezer at the IWDG in Kilrush) can help identify genetics, along with isolating pollutants stored in the blubber.

Should you come across a stranded animal, whether they be dead or alive, O’Connor, who runs stranding courses for the IWDG, recommends taking a photograph, dropping a pin in your location and sending it to the stranding page on the group’s website, and they’ll organise a rescue team.

As of last Monday, the whale is still on the rocks at Ross Strand, after being turned a full 180 degrees, spun in the swells of spring tides. Not enough to take her back out to sea though, and it would be a tricky task for the council to try to move the circa 48-tonne creature on jagged rocks.

The whale’s tongue is now swollen as it’s full of gas – as the photograph shows – and will more than likely explode, or the contents from her stomachs will likely be expelled at speed. It’s important to note that some of these creatures end up on our beaches as they are sick. Both brucella (brucellosis) and morbillivirus (from the measles family) have been found in stranded creatures, so it’s best not to go near them or to let children do so, as some were trying to last weekend. Dogs should also be kept away, Dr Geraghty says, as they could catch lungworm or stomach worms, both harmful to canines.

[ Doolough Diaries: ‘Lots of birds get blown off course and end up here. Quite happily, I might add’ ]

As for seagulls, though, none of your chip-eating Dublin types here, these ones stand about licking their lips.

Whaling actually took place here at the turn of the last century when the Norwegian government banned the slaughter at home to protect its dwindling stocks. Strategically, they chose Iniskea Island South as a site for a whaling station, as Blacksod Bay is the closest point in the country to feeding grounds on the continental shelf.

The blubber oil from whales was used in lamps and Victorian ladies should also be held to account as the paraphernalia used to give them tiny waists with corsets and huge hooped skirts were made from baleen plates taken from whale’s mouths. It’s estimated that 125 blue whales and 600 fin whales were slaughtered along this coast. Today, just 60 fin whales, like the lady on the rocks, have been photo identified off our coastline, still recovering from this whaling station, while the North Atlantic right whale has never recovered and is now extinct from our waters.