Lifeguards Thursday undertook the pungent task of towing out to sea a heavily decomposed humpback-whale carcass that drifted into the waters of the San Diego area this week.
The dead sea mammal, first spotted in the Los Angeles area last week, floated south past San Clemente over the last several days, said San Diego lifeguard Lt. Rick Romero.
The roughly 45-foot carcass was about a mile offshore of La Jolla when lifeguards initially tried to haul it out into deeper water Wednesday. The effort was thwarted by rough seas, according to Romero.
About 8:30 Thursday morning, the personnel tracked down the lifeless cetacean again, got a line around it and used a 42-foot fireboat to pull it away from shore to the southwest.
Lifeguards planned to deposit the carcass about five miles off the coast of Point Loma Thursday afternoon in hopes that it will float on its own from there farther out into the ocean, Romero said.
The U.S. Coast Guard attached electronic beacons to allow it to track the progress of the massive cadaver and make sure that it does not double back and wind up beached, creating a more involved land-based disposal challenge.
Dead whale being towed out to sea again https://t.co/fQeH2cejFf pic.twitter.com/l9uFFein9h
— CBS News 8 (@CBS8) April 27, 2017
— City News Service