As researchers and students flock to the dead blue whale, which washed up on the coast of Mendocino two weeks ago, only a few people are sticking around. The smell of rotting blubber is unbearable.
Dedicated volunteers have been hauling off chunks of blubber from the 72 foot whale a piece at the time to be composted.
The rare blue whale was killed in a ship collision on the open ocean on October 19, 2009. Blue whales, once on the brink of extinction, have been making a slow but steady comeback after laws protecting them were put into place in 1966 by the International Whaling Commission.
A large predictable population of blue whales has been frequenting the waters off the coast of Santa Barbara for the past years. In June and July, lucky whale watchers have seen up to 40 blue whales in a day as they scoop up tons of krill with their enormous jaws.
A second large population of blue whales was discovered more recently in the Gulf of Corcovado.
Some of the blue whales which summer in Santa Barbara travel to the Sea of Cortez in Baja during the winter, while others are believed to travel to the Costa Rica Dome.
But this growing population of whales faces new dangers that were not there in 1966 and before. Hundreds of giant ships pass at high speeds through the very channels where the blue whales' favorite food, krill, is most predominant. The ships often appoint watch people to spot the whales and avoid collisions, but the whales are hard to see below the surface and in the dark. There have been several reported collisions a year, and for every reported collisions, dozens more are going undetected or unreported.
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