Reflections on the Luskentyre Whale
The ‘teenage’ sperm whale which stranded at Luskentyre beach, image by Heather Beaton
Heather Beaton, the RSPB Warden for the Uists, shares her experience of visiting the stranded sperm whale on the Isle of Harris. The whale came ashore on Luskentyre beach - a well known beauty spot - and was later found to have over 100Kg of marine debris in it’s stomach.
He lay on the beach with his back to us as we approached. The sheer bulk of him had stood out as we approached, making the walk out interminably longer than predicted. His was a mass that stood out on the flat horizon, easy to lose for his rock like appearance, but there was a something in the way the light reflected off his skin that made it very clear he didn’t belong on that narrow spit of sand.
As we got closer, he rose out of the sand, so that he towered over us even though lying on his side. What stood out more than anything, was the lightness to his weight: there was a faultlessness to him that I didn’t expect to see, and a rightness despite the wrongness of his situation.
The sperm whale always seems to be the most awkward of the whales. With a huge square head and a blocky body, there looks to be nothing that is streamlined. They appear at odds with their watery home. However, upon seeing one in life he took on a different form. Everything about him was perfection, from the gently rolling curves of the strong head, to his gently bowed back, via the small dorsal fin and down to the pectoral fins that jutted low on the vast body. The tail fluke was mighty: eternally powerful, until eternity no longer worked.
He was beached. He’d swum up the shallow estuary waters of Luskentyre and gotten caught out by a falling tide. From accounts of those that were there, he thrashed and pulled, trying to free himself, before death inevitably came.
The distinctive head of a sperm whale, image by Heather Beaton
When we got there, he’d been dead for several hours. The sun was getting close to setting and the tide had turned. That same tide, under cover of darkness, would lift him over to the other side of the channel, flipping his body in the process. While we were there the pooled water around his tail and his head showed how he’d disturbed the sand in his panic, but we discovered the details of his last moments only later. For now, we knew nothing other than the clues left behind by his actions and the hints of a life half lived.
This was a chance that comes only once in a lifetime: to touch a(n almost) living whale. Stretching my hand out to make contact with the coolness of his skin, I expected to feel a roughness, but it was one of the smoothest surfaces I’ve ever felt in my life: far smoother than our own skin, and tough too. The closest I could think of comparing it to would be un-texturised rubber, and it had the same feeling of strength.
Sperm whales become scarred with age, particularly the males: their large prey fights back - a few scattered circular scars hint at a past battling giant squid in the world’s depths and they also battle one another for mating rights, their teeth leaving long pale scars in the skin. The male of Luskentyre was dark and almost unblemished. “Do you think he’s young?” we asked one another, “A teenager, perhaps?” and later it turned out to be correct: subadult male is the official term, but to me and to my colleague, he’ll always be more than what that impersonal description implies.
Two days later, once the autopsy was complete we would read in shocked silence about his condition: the stomach of this mighty sea animal contained 100kg of plastic. Waste from fishing boats in the form of nets and ropes, and waste from our daily lives such as coffee cups and disposable plastic. Looking for a meal, instead he’d gobbled our pollution, living a life with a gastric band is no fun for anything, and it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together and conclude that maybe, just maybe, what he was seeking in our shallow waters was respite to a growing hunger.
I may never get to see a whale in such perfect condition and close enough to touch again. I may never get the chance to lay my hand on its back, to study its eye, and to feel the strength of the fins. Run my hand along the flowing line from dorsal to tail, counting the bumps that highlight the arch. I may never get this chance, for time is running out for whales. Alternatively, I may, as this becomes a more common occurrence. As more and more cetaceans run into trouble in the seas that we are polluting and destroying, this whale may become the first in a long line of many that I have the dubious privilege of meeting so soon after death.
I really hope that this is the only one, and that this beautiful, starving, teenage whale is a catalyst that changes us all.