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| Pygmy Sperm Whale |
Whale stranded along Chesapeake Bay in Va. Beach euthanized
Rescuers euthanized a whale after it was found stranded along the Chesapeake Bay shore in Virginia Beach.
The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center said the 8-foot-long juvenile male pygmy sperm whale was in critical condition when it was found Tuesday. The aquarium's stranding response team later had to euthanize the whale.
The aquarium said the whale will be taken to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington on Wednesday for research.
Back in grad school, a fellow graduate student studied whales. One weekend there was a whale stranding on a nearby beach, and he, his professor and other workers got to attend to their euthanization. Being full sized whales, even a rifle bullet would not penetrate and they had to use chain saws. The price of a graduate education.
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| Protesters march at The Hump |
In almost completely unrelated whale news,
a restaurant owner in Los Angeles was recently convicted of serving whale meat:
The parent company and owner of a Santa Monica restaurant pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges stemming from serving meat from the endangered Sei whale to undercover investigators in 2009 and 2010.
Typhoon Restaurant Inc. and owner Brian Vidor each pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sale of a marine mammal at the now-closed restaurant The Hump at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport.
As part of the plea, Vidor admitted that he was aware his sushi chefs, who have previously pleaded guilty, were serving whale at the restaurant and allowed it.
Typhoon and Vidor will jointly pay a $27,500 fine and will be placed on 18-month and 12-month terms of probation, respectively, if the terms of the plea agreements are accepted by Judge Dale S. Fischer.
"Being full sized whales, even a rifle bullet would not penetrate and they had to use chain saws."
ReplyDeleteNo... I suspect that they knew little or nothing about guns. May I quote to you from www.sixguns.com
"The .44 Magnum has done it all. It has been used to take every type of big game on the planet including Alaskan Brown Bear, Polar Bear, African Elephants, and Cape Buffalo. More often than not this has been done with one carefully placed shot. It can be loaded to 1300-1400 feet per second with a hard cast bullet and penetrate five feet from stem to stern in a Cape Buffalo. Loaded down to 850 to 950 feet per second with a 240 grain cast bullet it becomes a superb target cartridge. In between, a 240 to 265 grain bullet at 1300 feet per second makes an excellent silhouette load. With some of the new bullet designs we even finally have defensive loads for the .44 Magnum that will do the job without overzealous penetration."
And I have not even begone to discuss large bore rifles.
THEY may not have know about, or had access to, guns that could do the job. But I'll bet a lunch that they do and did exist.