To move a 40-ton fin whale carcass, Samish Island finds a way

SAMISH ISLAND, Skagit County - At the 61-foot fin whale's tail, a woman crouched on the bloodied sand, closed her eyes and sang softly. Near the whale's head, two other women set up their cellphones on a tripod, smiled and posed for photos.

Equal parts somber scene and spectacle, hundreds of people descended on the normally quiet beach on Samish Island last week for what would likely be a once-in-a-lifetime viewing: an endangered fin whale, known for its size and speed, close enough to touch its rubbery skin and hear the hisses of gas buildup in its carcass.

The 80,000-pound whale got stranded on the Skagit County coastline and died Tuesday. Now an endangered animal was decomposing in the beach community's backyard, and Samish Island residents soon began to wonder what would become of the carcass. The whale was starting to smell, with squares of its insides, cut by researchers for a necropsy, dripping out. Visitors were coming to the private beach, walking through their properties, then stepping onto the whale for selfies. Decomposition could take months.

Under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's usual approach, a dead whale stays where it lands. But leaving the whale on the beach wasn't an option, the Samish Island community decided. They would move it themselves.

But how do you move the second-largest animal on Earth?

***

For four days, neighbors and visitors marveled at the creature, and grieved over its tragic end. They could see its blubber, but the layers were thinner than a healthy whale. The subadult whale, already an impressive length, could have grown up to 80 feet and lived up to 90 years.

"I felt sadness and joy," said resident Steve Van Luven, who lives on the beach. "Joy for being able to see it, but sadness that it came here to die."

Neighbors were shaken by the death. They had seen the same whale for months, but never this close - Van Luven at first thought he was looking at a giant log, until its tail rose up. When the whale stopped moving, they alerted groups like the Central Puget Sound Stranding Network that something might be wrong.

Around 8:30 p.m. Monday, onlookers clapped as the whale seemed to get a second wind and swim a loop.

"But then he came back," said Van Luven, a former Washington state legislator. "He knew he wanted to move in here and die."

Carolyn Coble, who has lived on Samish Island since 1980, saw its tail flapping soon before it died.

"That was so hard to see," she said. "It was like his last hurrah."

Responders were on their way when the whale died Tuesday morning. The whale was malnourished and had recently been entangled with nets or other equipment.

Fin whales are the second-largest whale species after blue whales. They're known as the greyhounds of the sea, because they can swim up to 20 mph, and are usually in offshore waters. This whale had been spotted in the Salish Sea since September, which is rare, said John Calambokidis, research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective.

In 2013, a fin whale died after a vessel strike and washed up on a Burien beach. The city urged onlookers to avoid the area because of its reeking stench, then worked with a private contractor to tow the whale to an empty beach.

The Samish Island whale was the 18th to die this year in Washington's waters. The rest were gray whales; researchers have called the gray whale death toll alarmingly high. Calambokidis said the gray whales' deaths aren't connected to the Samish Island fin whale. The organization records a fin whale stranding about once every three or four years.

***

In nearby Edison, Tony Breckenridge got a call asking if he could help. A former sheriff's deputy, he had helped move a gray whale that died near Anacortes last month. But the fin whale was at least five times as big, he added.

On Thursday, a group stood by the whale, strategized how to move it and began making calls. Some live along the beach and others, like Breckenridge, are part of the greater Samish Island community.

"We were relying on families that have been here for generations, and they're always willing to help and get things done," he said. "It just took some phone calling to get people out there."

They called boat owners from nearby oyster-growing operations and loggers to help with rigging. Someone floated the idea of using a helicopter; another neighbor joked about using explosives like an Oregon town did in 1970, ending in a disaster of raining whale blubber. They consulted with NOAA and other environmental government agencies to approve plans, Heinrich said.

"I know who's got boats there, so I was contacting them all," Breckenridge said. "We had numerous people lined up to do the pull. If one fell through, we had another one that was available. They were more than able to get in line and help out."

***

For a group of private citizens to take on such an endeavor required a "herculean effort," said Garry Heinrich, response coordinator for the Central Puget Sound Marine Mammal Stranding Network. By the end, about 40 people had "gotten their hands dirty" in helping with the move, Breckenridge said.

"These folks have just totally risen to the occasion," Heinrich said.

The whale rested on a mud flat in a shallow tideland, too heavy to float, so residents spent $9,000 on industrial lift bags, tied just right on the whale so they wouldn't slip. Every bit of weight or lift potential would help get the whale up an extra inch off the bottom. Volunteers showed up Friday morning for manual labor and dug under the whale to make room for straps to go around it.

As the tide came in during sunset, water surrounded the whale, dubbed "Finn" by one neighbor. The scent of decaying flesh wafted toward families sitting around fire pits several houses away.

A small boat arrived at 9:40 p.m. and a man waded in with a flashlight and confirmed only the tail was floating. Twenty minutes later, a commercial fishing boat pulled up and a crowd of about two dozen people watched from the beach. Two kayakers paddled out with a headlamp that occasionally illuminated the whale's intestines.

With ropes now attached, an onlooker yelled: "It moved!" One of the boat's captains briefly walked on top of the whale. The boat pulled. The rope went taut. The whale barely moved.

The boat tugged the carcass, now parallel to the shoreline, just before 10:30 p.m. This time, the animal seemed to move, to cheers from the beach. Then another tug, assisted with a kayaker's oar guiding the tail bobbing sideways in the water.

A few more pulls later, the journey to its final resting place began. By 11:20 p.m., the whale was far from shore and transferred to another boat that took it to an undisclosed beach to decompose. The trip took four hours, Breckenridge said.

The weeklong whale encounter had ended.

"What is Samish Island going to do now?" someone wondered aloud as they left the beach.

Another neighbor replied: "Go back to normal."

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.