Minke Stranding!

I sort of feel kind of guilty for how exciting today was, because sometimes I think "dead whale" shouldn't make me a happy as it does, but today, it kind of did. I might be a bad person.

Anyway, today there was a stranded minke a little west of us, and MICS is the stranding response unit, so we got to go check it out!

Size has become such a relative thing. In reality, minkes are big animals. Like, probably 2 cows worth of animal. But compared to seeing humpbacks and fin whales, I knew the animal we saw was "tiny". Oh what a life I lead.

So we got there, and it's pouring rain. Makes it hard to take any kind of notes in the rain. Fortunately the rain did stop eventually, but not before getting every piece of paper we had sopping wet, and all the sharpies stop working. Oy.

We got there, took the total length measurement of the minke, then started taking our samples. Eight samples of muktuk (blubber and skin. They don't call it that here, that's just what the Inuit call it) from up and down the body, an entire jaws worth of baleen, plus a little bit of skin for isotope analysis. An extra sample of muktuk and a piece of our baleen for DFO, and we called it a day. It was a quick response because the rain made it impossible to take lots of measurements (we really had nowhere to write them down) and a little animal like that didn't need a whole lot of samples taken. A whole bunch of photos though, while praying that the camera doesn't get too damaged in the rain.

I didn't get to touch the minke (wah!) because I was taking photos of the samples, and you need clean hands to touch the camera.

We left it there, and hopefully the seagulls will help with the decomposition process. I'm not quite sure if they'll do anything with the body or just leave it up to mother nature.

All I know is I smell, my clothes are in the wash, my rain jacket might never be the same, and that is the biggest dead animal I have ever worked with. Can only go up from here!

And on a totally random note, I got my first ride on an ATV today! It was kind of fun, I have to admit!

Due to the nature of the photos, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post them because of fun people like PETA, I'm not putting any photos of the minke up here (I really don't want to get in trouble!). Sorry guys!!!

Speak Loud!