Foiled Again
An attempt by the Animal Uprising™ to infiltrate the US Navy submarine base at Bangor, Washington, was foiled over the weekend. A gray whale attempted to gain access to the facility.
Area residents spotted the carcass Saturday on the east side of Toandos Peninsula, and a necropsy led by John Calambokidis, a biologist with Cascade Research Collectives, was conducted Monday.
"We couldn't find any major external injuries that would suggest a cause of death," Calambokidis told the Kitsap Sun newspaper.
Tissue samples were taken to test for toxic chemicals and disease processes but may yield little information because the whale had been dead for at least a week and a half, he said.
The whale, seen alive near Seabeck in about mid-December and later spotted near the Alderbrook Inn at the south end of the fjord, may have been sick when it entered Hood Canal about the middle of December, Calambokidis said. The first report that it had died was received Dec. 31, but the carcass was not spotted again until Saturday.
The Navy, who isn't talking about this event at all, is believed to have used a new blubber-seeking torpedo on the intruder. Or at least we're pretty sure that's what our informant told us. He can be a bit tough to understand when he's in that condition.
By crosspatch, Tuesday, 9 January , 2007 @ 4:17 pm
There is a typo in the report. It was a gay whale, not a grey whale. It was attracted to some of our subs and did what came naturally for a gay whale.
The ACLU will be filing suit against the US Navy for wrongful death of the whale in a hate crime accusation.