Look what my dog dragged in....

She started bringing home dead squirrels, now look at her!

Actually, a fin whale (I think) floated up on the beach at Chadbourne Gulch, the beach the surfers call "blues."  This is North of Fort Bragg, just south of Westport.  It's pretty incredible to see a big (about 70 ft) balleenopter up close on it's own, but check out the bite mark just below the pectoral fin, OMG!  There's no telling if the bite was post mortem or not, although it seems unlikely that an 18 ft fish would take on a 70 ft whale....but maybe.  Blues is located about 3/4 mi from the place where Randy Fry lost his life.

You can sure tell when that you live in small town when the entire town shows up on sunday afternoon to look at a stinking carcass.  But that's what happened....all my nieghbors were there.

Image 1: Yosh surveying the back of her catch
Image 2: Another view from the back
Image 3: Yoshi checking her prey from the front
Image 4: Shark bite, or maybe killer whale
Image 5: Balleen
Image 6: Whale eye
Image 7: Whale belly

Man, that brings back memoirs of a Baja trip down to the East Cape area near Cabo.

Had to fish next to a dead whale for two days.  Great Dorado fishing.  But, when you got down wind of it.  You could not keep your lunch down.

We found it on the first day and went looking for it again on the second day.  We were in a super panga.

Ken kickfish

That is COOOOOL.  My daughters would LOVE to check that thing out.  Looks like folks were parting out the baleen.

I can see someone ordering the explosives now. Let's hope they don't try to blow this one up.

BIG,stinky piece of meat=dog heaven 

I've spent some time at Chadbourne Gulch. It a cool place to hang out. I've even taken a couple of people who lost the fight with the sea from that beach.

It's a cool place to watch people surf and a cool place to have a beach fire with some cold ones. It's likely to smell a little for a while. I'd like to get a chance to got over to the coast and see the whale before it's gone.

Nice photo's.

CHEERS!

...found my beached whale pic from HMB back in 2005. Check out those BITE marks  This pic was taken just South of HMB State Beach.....

I just find it amazing that so much of it was not eaten. I'm sure that eventually the thing will be digested by millions of smaller creature but why not more after it was freshly killed/died. I think this spells volumes about how devistated the shark pop. truely is. Randall