Sep 28, 10:00 AM
A whale on the sand, sharks in the surf, and a city suddenly remembering caution
Perth’s City Beach became an uneasy spectacle after a dead whale washed ashore and authorities warned that sharks, including a great white, were circling nearby.
Perth has managed to turn a dead whale into both a public attraction and a public warning, which is about as neat a summary of modern beach culture as one could ask for. On Monday morning, surf lifesavers found the carcass at City Beach at about 7.30am, and the smell, by all accounts, did the rest of the work. Hundreds came to look; several sharks came too.
The whale, estimated at about six metres long, washed up on one of the city’s better-known beaches and quickly changed the mood along the coast. Local authorities closed the beach for several kilometres in both directions, after multiple sharks were spotted in the area, including a five-metre great white. The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development said the carcass could keep acting as bait, drawing sharks closer to shore along that stretch of coast, and urged people to take extra care.
That warning landed only 10 days after 63-year-old Greg O’Neill was killed in a shark attack while swimming close to shore at Sorrento Beach, about 12 kilometres north of City Beach. In other words, this is not the week to treat the water as a decorative feature. Town of Cambridge mayor Gary Mack said the public needed to pay attention and not take risks, a message that should hardly be controversial, though apparently it still needs repeating.
The scene on the sand was predictably human. Some onlookers took selfies in front of the carcass, while others covered their noses against the stench. One local, David Jones, called the dead whale sad, saying whales were beautiful animals, and noted that several had washed up on the same stretch of coast over the past decade.
Authorities were assessing the carcass and expected it to be removed on Tuesday. Mack said the likely plan was to load it on to a truck and take it to a landfill site. Towing it back out to sea was also under consideration, though he said that could be difficult because of the surf, the rocking motion and the fact that the whale appeared to be wedged on a sandbar. For once, nature has not made the logistics especially convenient.
Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com
