A beached whale has provided marine wildlife rescue experts and dockers with a mammoth task in Las Palmas this week. The finback whale, also known as the common rorqual, is a species of baleen whale and the second-longest cetacean after the blue whale.
The giant mammal died and then washed up a short distance off the coast near the city’s old part on Monday, triggering a complicated operation to retrieve its body from the water. The first part of the operation on Monday saw it towed away from the initial site, where it had attracted the attention of a group of sharks which were attempting to feed on it.
Following its removal to a protected area at the port, experts from the island’s wildlife recovery centre were called out to lead the delicate manoeuvres to winch the 27-tonne whale, which measured 17 metres in length, out of the water and place it on dry land.
Divers assisted with the placing of three 18-metre harnesses underneath and around the giant cetacean – the biggest ever to reach the coast of Las Palmas – before the whale was winched out of the sea using cranes and onto a special flat lorry brought in for the emergency. The five-hour operation drew considerable interest from port workers and curious onlookers, who recorded the salvage procedure on their phones for posterity.
The stricken rorqual was then transported with a Civil Guard escort to a nearby facility to enable vets from Las Palmas University’s Animal Health Unit to carry out a postmortem today (Wednesday) to establish the possible reasons for it beaching and the cause of death. Cursory initial examinations indicate that there were no signs of major trauma apart from the marks left by the sharks.
The operation recalled a similarly complicated procedure to remove another giant rorqual which died in the sea and washed ashore at Arguineguín, on the south coast of Gan Canaria, in October 2021.
