Newfoundland Stranded Whale Probably Won't Explode

Exploding whales—they boast a fairly brief, but dramatic history on the internet. Of course, who could forget this horrifying, totally disgusting, but oddly compelling video of a sperm whale carcass exploding in the Faroe Islands

So when a dead blue whale washed ashore in Trout River, Newfoundland, last week, the Internet had to know: Would it explode?

Helpfully, one expert made us a handy web site: hasthewhaleexplodedyet.com. It’s the work of Andrew David Thaler, a PhD in marine science and a deep-sea ecologist based in the Bay Area of California. He’s also the editor-in-chief of Southern Fried Science, a science writer for Upwell, and a disseminator of fascinating ocean stuff on Twitter at @SFriedScientist So we had to track him down and ask the million-dollar questions. Why do whales explode? Just how gross/bad is it when they do? What’s going to happen with this one in Newfoundland?
Here’s a hint—it’s good for the town, but maybe bad for the internet.
Read on for everything you wanted to know about exploding dead whales. 

Fusion: As a deep-sea ecologist, what is your particular interest in whales?
Andrew David Thaler: I actually work a lot with dead whales, in the deep sea. When a whale dies at sea, it tends to sink, and that’s a huge input of food into deep-sea ecosystem, which tend to be very food-limited. So it represents basically a massive input of energy and you get these huge, unique communities that grow and live around them. So I’m very interested in dead whales, primarily at sea-—but I’m also always entertained when whales wash ashore and these kinds of news stories break.

You mentioned that usually, dead whales sink. So why would a dead whale wash onto shore, like this one has done? 
Sometimes when whales die close to shore, they strand. Sometimes whales will strand first, then die. I don’t actually know the specifics of what caused these particular whales-—there are actually three of them along the Newfoundland coast—-I don’t know the specifics of what cause these three particular whales to strand, and we won’t know until a necropsy is done, which I believe the Canadian government is preparing.

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