Whale Fall

a rare encounter with a solemn memorial to the circle of life

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Sometimes that melancholy ache at the center of your being is what it means to be alive.

Most of my interactions with nature reside in the emotional realm of joy, delight, awe, amazement. To be prompted to these feelings by the natural world around me is certainly tightly bound in what it means to be alive. If the natural world around me did not stir these emotions, my life would be a faded shadow of its true capacity.

But there’s more. Because the natural world is one grand cycle. Full of beginnings - and endings. Living - and dying. And in the presence of these particular inflection points, when the realm of joy, delight, awe, and amazement bleeds into the realm of sorrow, loss, gravity, and the solemn tug of eternity - I suddenly become aware that this is what it means to be alive, as well.

It is always a delicate balance, when and how to share about the death of a wild creature. A balance between respect and reminder, rejecting spectacle, advancing memorial. The desire to inform, and honor, and contemplate.

This is the carcass of a Minke Whale, recognizable by the distinct white armbands on his flippers. He washed ashore on an island off the coast of Jonesport in late summer. He was visible from the research facility where my oldest son interns, and they were able to take a boat out to gather information to pass on to the proper experts and authorities.

Minke whales are the smallest of the baleen whales. This male is about 23 feet long, placing him at or near maturity, which occurs around 3 - 8 years of age. Minkes can grow as large as 35 feet and live as long as 50 years.

Minke populations are generally considered healthy, and they are distributed broadly across most of Earth’s oceans. They feed on a wide range of tiny-schooling-fish like herring, anchovies, crustaceans, krill, and plankton. Killer whales are their only known natural predators.

There are no visible signs of ship strike or rope entanglement on this whale, which is good news in these sometimes-crowded waters that provide a vital livelihood to both marine life and commercial fishermen.

When a whale dies, off-gassing from the decomposition process causes bloating, which in this case is visible in the tongue. Bloating can become quite dramatic, and in rare cases can even end with explosion.

It is always advised to keep a safe distance from whale carcasses for several reasons. Depending on the species, there may be laws requiring distance from the carcass. Harmful bacteria may also be present as part of the natural decomposition process, and marine mammal carcasses have been know to transmit diseases to both people and pets. And, of course, the carcass will attract scavengers, so it’s best to keep out of the way.

As is ever the way with nature, the end of one life will form the basis of new lives yet to come. And in the case of a whale carcass, the transition is dramatic.

It is impossible to fully comprehend the enormity of the nutrient transfer from one of the largest of marine inhabitants to countless members of every single level of the marine food web. We can’t even observe a whale fall completely from start to finish - time and distance are simply too vast. The process spans years, if not decades, as the whale’s remains drift with ocean currents and gradually settle into extreme depths. What we have been able to observe is staggering.

Video: Whale Fall at 10,623 feet. National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

A whale carcass provides a concentrated explosion of nutrition for a vast array of wildlife, from seabirds and top predators, through scavengers of all shapes and sizes, right down to the tiniest of decomposers, slowly breaking down matter into energy that will ripple back up the ocean layers to the very largest creatures, once again.

Whale fall sustains wave upon wave of tangled food webs, extending its maritime reach even to airborne and land-bound companions, feeding multitudes for generations to come. This beautiful Minke, graceful in life, has now become incredibly generous in passing - the largest of ocean dwellers slowly giving itself back to the expansive community of ocean life.

The passing of a whale is a monolith moment, prompting the sudden realization of just how tiny we are in this vast expanse of a planet that we call home.

These majestic creatures are, in a way, so familiar in appearance - from photos and videos, t-shirts and graphic designs, brochures for whale-watching tours, even assorted plush toys! And yet, nearly all of the long moments of their lives, stretching into hours and days and months and years, are lived entirely out of reach of any human eyes.

They traverse thousands of miles of ocean depths, feeding and migrating and socializing and singing, occasionally surfacing within the intersection of our human activities, where we begin to think we know them pretty well. But the truth is that, as with the vast majority of our ocean counterparts, they live entirely complex lives that we still know strikingly little about.

I find it entirely enchanting that, while the list of Minke vocalizations on the NOAA’s website includes “clicks, grunts, pulse trains, ratchets, thumps” - they also note that scientists “recently discovered ‘boings.’” 🤣 I can’t think of anything more delightful in life than to be that person whose job one day leads them to “discover boings.” That has got to be one of the best feelings on earth.

And it really just serves as a reminder that, even when we begin to feel familiar with the fins and faces and sleek images of these cetacean wonders - there is so much more to them than we can ever know. We just aren't there, day in and day out, side by side in all the little moments that you need to truly get to know a life. We are worlds apart - though we grow a little closer every time we stop to think about it.