A beautiful clear California day with an unidentified object floating on the water. . . A closer look at the object reveals that it is actually a bloated whale corpse floating thanks to post-death gases. And then this lifeless body is surrounded by blood as it scatters into the air with a huge explosion!
If this event sounds like something you want to see, WTF! Thanks to Outdoors, you can watch second by second. The account that posted the video on YouTube says that this explosion took place on the California coast near Tomales Bay. It’s unclear exactly what type of whale this body belonged to, as the video footage only shows the last moments before the big bang, but the most common marine mammals in the area are gray whales, blue whales and humpback whales.
As the video quickly turns into a “Guess the Viscera” game, it can be said to be “biologically interesting,” as the YouTube comments suggest. After the first bloody explosion, almost all the organs of the dead whale protrude from the mouth of the body.
Explosions like this are considered a natural part of weathering for these animals, and tales of exploding whales can be heard in many parts of the Earth. Dead whales with gas-filled bellies make their way to beaches and shores.
And, of course, when we talk about whale explosions, we can’t miss the Great Whale Explosion that took place in Oregon in 1970. However, in this case, the explosion was not natural, it was man-made. After a nearly 14-metre sperm whale washed up on the beach in Florence, the authorities decided that they had no choice but to create an explosion to get rid of the body, and the consequences of this decision are quite “interesting”.
Detonating a whale seems to be a good example of the Goldilocks Principle: You have to use exactly the right volume of explosive. Extremes are acceptable; You can either use just enough explosives to throw the carcass into the sea, or use explosives to completely destroy the whale. What you don’t want is to be stuck somewhere in between, where the section of highway tasked with blowing up the Oregon whale found themselves that November day.
The resulting explosion was described by the audience as a “powerful explosion of tomato juice”, while huge chunks of oil were strewn around. Whale fragments traveled a considerable distance before hitting buildings, cars and people. The people of Oregon cheerfully decided to embrace their heritage by naming a park after the horrific event. . .
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