It is an event so rare that no one can remember it happening in Boston Harbor, and no one can predict what is about to unfold.
A dead finback whale, which could be as long as 70 feet, was spotted early Sunday morning floating near Black Falcon Cruise Terminal in South Boston, drifting with the currents like a message in a bottle.
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Gee I know this might be too simple but why not just tow it out to one of Boston's outer islands and let it decay? After the gulls,crabs, and other scavengers finish with it pick up the skeleton. What happens when whales die out at sea? I'm quite sure a tugboat that pushes around aircraft carriers around could do the job for very short money. It seems that the easiest solutions are overlooked so some people can make money by complicating things.
Mr. Baker portrays the dead fin whale (aka finback) as apparently being moved significantly on an ebbing tide from inside to outside Boston Harbor. It was at one point, he said, near some portion of Long Island (though whether north, south, east or west of that well known site of city social services is not disclosed), and then the next day it was spotted out by Boston Light, which is east of the inner harbor entrance at Deer Island. This latest Globe report has also raised the beast's length from 50 to 70 feet as it is "drifting with the currents like a message in a bottle" near the Black Falcon Cruise Terminal. What we have not seen reported by the Globe is whether the air around this probably decomposing beast is noticably tinged with a slighly odiferous aura. It is also interesting to note that private land owners are eligible to pay for disposal if one of these creatures washes up on a beach owned by a party other than a public entity like the state or a town. That raises a question about the state's statutory requirement that all shorelines - including those with riparian rights - are open from the high water mark seaward to anyone for the purposes of fishing, fowling and navigation, as well as former state Senate President Billy Bulger's famed desire to be allowewd to perambulate between dawn and dusk below the high tide mark. As for dead whales, well, there seems to be no Massachusetts statute that rules on the permissibility of a defunct leviathan imposing itself on a shoreline, either above or below the high tide mark. Finally, does Mr. Baker mean there is a passport requirement for the 10,000 finbacks said to reside in U.S. waters? Or are they free to join their fellow finbacks in Canadian and Greenland waters of the Atlantic Ocean? And what about the finback population off Oregon, Washingon and California? Are the included in Mr. Baker's group of 10,000?