Men and machines pulled and pushed together for hours on Monday, Feb. 8, to get a dead baleen whale from nearshore waters on the Mustang Island beach to the front line of dunes that were excavated to create a burial site for the 48-foot mammal. At left, Tony Amos, Port Aransas coordinator of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network takes a closer look at the creature. For more photos go to Page 1B, and for more information and still more photos, see Tony Amos’ column on Page 8B. STAFF PHOTOS BY MURRAY JUDSON The whale lived and died in the Gulf of Mexico.

Its burial took place in the sand dunes of Port Aransas.

A 48-foot whale that washed up dead on the beach just south of Access Road 1 on Monday, Feb. 8, attracted a crowd of more than 200 onlookers as wildlife officials probed the carcass and workers used heavy equipment to drag the huge

‘ creature into the dunes for burial.

The spectacle also attracted newspaper and television reporters and photographers from Corpus Christi.

“This is a very unusual event,” said Tony Amos, the Port Aransas coordinator of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

Exactly what species the whale was and why it died were unknown, said Amos, who also is director of the Animal Rehabilitation Keep, or ARK, in Port Aransas.

What is known is that the animal was of the baleen variety, a type of whale that includes blue, fin, sei, brydes and minke whales, Amos said.

Baleen whales are distinguished by the fringed plates of fingernail-like mate- rial, called baleen, that are attached to their upper jaws. When it eats, the whale takes in big gulps of water, then spews the water back out and uses the baleen to hold back the tiny sea creatures that are the whale’s diet.

An animal believed to be the same whale was spotted floating, dead, in the gulf an estimated 13 miles off Sabine Pass about 10 days ago, said Lea Walker, the Corpus Christi regional coordinator for the stranding network.

Burying a 48-foot, 12-ton whale was no small task, and it required a team effort. Clockwise from top left, Mayor Claude Brown uses his custom-made beach vehicle to pull the dead whale from the surf. Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network Coordinator Tony Amos, at right, instructs volunteers on securing a rope around the mammal’s tail. Brown gives a thumbs-up signal ‘mission accomplished’ after the four-hour effort to get the beast from the water to its burial site in the dunes. Just how to approach the task of getting the whale from the water to the man-made front line of dunes where it would be buried required coordination by interim city manager Dave Parsons, kneeling at left, the mayor, standing in grey t-shirt next to Parsons, and others. As the effort wound down, Parsons found himself answering media questions. Amos was driving down the shore, conducting his regular survey of the Port Aransas beach, when a beachgoer pointed the whale out to him about 7:39 a.m. Monday.

The whale, which was lying in shallow water, had a body that was long and slender, which is not an unusual shape for a whale of that type and length, Amos said.

Wildlife officials were able to determine that the whale was a female, but it was impossible to immediately identify the species because the body was so decomposed and chewed-up by other marine creatures.

The whale’s dorsal and pectoral fins were collected as samples that might help experts determine the whale’s species.

Wildlife officials also examined the contents of the animal’s gut to see what it had been eating, but they found mostly decomposed material that wasn’t identifi- able, Amos said.

The last stranding of a baleen whale on a Texas shore took place in 1989 on the Matagorda peninsula, Amos said. It was a young animal that died on the beach, and it had a large amount of plastic debris in its belly, he said.

Amos estimated that the whale that washed up on shore Monday weighed 12 tons. That presented a challenge for city workers intent on getting the odorous body off the beach and buried.

Three pieces of heavy equipment were used to push and pull the remains out of the water, across the beach and into the first row of dunes.

Equipment operators included Mayor Claude Brown. He and his workers donated their time in the effort. Island Construction also provided workers and equipment at no charge to the city.

Brown and Interim City Manager Dave Parsons directed efforts at the scene.

“I thought it went really great,” Parsons said. “I thought all the entities out there did just a great job, between the ARK (Animal Rehabilitation Keep) people and the city public works crews, the police keeping people back and traffic moving and Claude’s crew, and Island Construction coming out and helping. It was a big, coordinated effort, and it went perfectly.”

Two front-end loaders made a 30- foot-wide cut that was 12 to 15 feet deep in the front row of dunes, and the body was placed there. Wildlife officials conducted a necropsy – an autopsy for animals – and took samples in a process that lasted through much of the day. The actual burial didn’t get finished until the next day.

Some work in sand dunes requires a special permit reviewed by the General Land Office and issued by the Port Aransas City Council. But the work to bury the whale was allowed under an existing permit, Parsons said.

The first row of dunes are not natural, but were formed there by heavy equipment as part of beach maintenance activities over the years.