Researchers need bigger boat to move 30-ton whale

Researchers who wanted to haul away a dead gray whale floating in the middle of Saratoga Passage on Monday thought a crabbing boat could do the trick.It turned out that the boat couldn't handle 30 tons of waterlogged whale.So Tuesday they called in reinforcements: a powerful Whidbey Island tour boat called the Island Whaler.If all goes as planned, the jet-powered catamaran, used primarily for water tours, should have pulled the carcass onto a restricted Navy-owned beach on Whidbey Island by Tuesday night. There researchers from several organizations plan to perform a necropsy to determine cause of death and take the animal's skull.Several dozen people spotted the dead whale rolling with the tide half submerged in the waters just off Camano Island State Park, beginning about 10 a.m. Sunday.As they often do, the whale researchers wanted the carcass for research.The trouble started when the pilot of a crabbing boat tried to haul the 40-foot long gray whale through the waters off the Northwestern-most tip of Camano Island."The boat was too small and the whale was too big," said Howard Garrett, of the Whidbey Island-based Orca Network.The boat floundered about attached to the whale for about three hours, only moving it about 400 yards, Garrett said. Researchers took measurements of the whale and a blubber sample and noted it was a male before tying it to a marker buoy and setting the crab boat loose from its burden.The dead whale then briefly washed up on Sandy Point, a Whidbey Island beach about a mile from the town of Langley. The tide later sucked it back into Saratoga Passage and researchers thought they'd lost it.Finally, the Orca Network got a call saying the whale was floating off Camano Head. The organization secured the use of the Island Whaler from Deception Pass Tours, of Anacortes. The whale was successfully hooked and slowly but surely making its way north as of late Tuesday.After the necropsy, the whale corpse will be left to decompose on the beach.The Orca Network tracks the movements of about a dozen gray whales that migrate into local waters each year. It's not clear if the dead whale belongs to that group.Gray whales typically make a pit stop at Saratoga Passage and Possession Sound at this time of year and stay for three months, bulking up on ghost shrimp before heading north to the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia.Sometimes, a stray whale that normally wouldn't frequent local waters will come here when it's too sick or too old to continue with its northward migration.Meanwhile, another dead gray whale was discovered floating in Birch Bay near the BP Cherry Point Refinery in Whatcom County. Researchers from Cascadia Research in Olympia performed a necropsy on that whale Tuesday. The cause of death hasn't been determined but it appears to be caused by an "instantaneous acute" hit, Garrett said.It's unusual to find two dead gray whales in the space of a few days, Garrett said."It's probably just coincidence," he said.By Debra SmithHerald Writer