{"id":43792,"date":"2025-09-04T19:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T19:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/43792\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T19:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T19:42:07","slug":"public-urged-not-to-approach-57ft-dead-whale-washed-up-on-cork-beach-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/43792\/","title":{"rendered":"Public urged not to approach 57ft dead whale washed up on Cork beach \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

People should not approach a huge dead fin whale that has washed up on a beach on the Mizen peninsula in west Cork<\/a> due to uncertainty around the cause of death, an expert has warned.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Levesque of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) said the animal, which washed up in the Barleycove area, was a female fin whale. <\/p>\n

It is the second largest mammal in the world and can grow up to 25m, weigh about 48 tonnes and live up to 90 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whale clearly has been dead for a while \u2013 it\u2019s very decomposed because there isn\u2019t much of the head left and you can see from the tail that there are bite marks which are probably from sharks, so it\u2019s definitely been scavenged,\u201d said Ms Levesque.<\/p>\n

IDWG stranding group volunteers Jasmine Stavenow Jerremalm and Jan Wolstenholme examined the whale \u2013 a female measuring about 17.5m (57.4ft), although that is an estimate because of the amount of decomposition at either end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith fin whales we normally get one or two a year being washed ashore, so it\u2019s not out of the ordinary, but with that level of decomposition and without a postmortem, we can\u2019t say how this one died. But it was definitely scavenged at sea and washed in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ItIt is not uncommon for fin whales to wash up on beaches. This one was photographed at Baile U\u00ed Chuill Strand, Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry last year. Photograph: Valerie O’Sullivan <\/p>\n

Disposal of the whale carcass is the responsibility of the local authority, although it was unclear on Thursday afternoon what plans Cork County Council<\/a> had for disposing of the Barleycove whale.<\/p>\n

However, Ms Levesque said the size of the whale carcass meant removal would be difficult so it was likely the council would look at disposing of the remains by burying the animal close to where it was washed up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are often contacted by local authorities about what they should do to dispose of a whale so we recommend burial above the high tide line so it can\u2019t be uncovered again, so if it isn\u2019t washed back out to sea, that is probably what they will do,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the meanwhile, we would urge people not to go to close to the remains but to keep their distance because we don\u2019t know what she died from and of course we would urge anyone who comes across any stranded whales or dolphins to contact us as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People should not approach a huge dead fin whale that has washed up on a beach on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1877,10011,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-43792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cork","11":"tag-cork-county-council","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}