Drift whale

A drift whale is a cetacean mammal that has died at sea and floated into shore. This is in contrast to a beached or stranded whale, which reaches land alive and may die there or regain safety in the ocean. Most cetaceans that die, from natural causes or predators, do not wind up on land; most die far offshore and sink deep to become novel ecological zones known as whale falls. Some species that wash ashore are scientifically dolphins, i.e. members of the family Delphinidae, but for ease of use, this article treats them all as "drift whales". For example, one species notorious for mass strandings is the pilot whale, also known as "blackfish", which is taxonomically a dolphin.

In historical sources, it is not always clear whether a given cetacean washed up alive or dead, but the term "drift whale" focuses on the benefits of its carcass – meat, blubber, fat, and other products – to the people who claimed it.^[1] Nowadays, when a dead whale washes up on a beach, often the authorities are required to dispose of it as a potential hazard to human health, so the resource implications go the other way: a drift whale is no longer a benefit to a community, but an expensive disadvantage.^[2]

Overview

Species

Many cetacean species have been documented as drift whales, but some are more common than others. In New England, for example, the carcasses of fin, humpback, sperm, right, and pilot whales, as well as dolphins, are most likely to drift ashore.^[3] Some species have a naturally high buoyancy, and float when they are dead, aided by the gases of putrefaction.^[4]

Whales that live in the pelagic ocean, far from the continental shelf, are less likely to wash up ashore than coastal species.^[5] Once these deep-sea animals do find themselves in shallower waters, however, they may run into difficulties, as the gradual shelving of the shoreline is thought to play a role in confusing their sense of echolocation.^[6] Sperm whale strandings are known to have occurred in the North Sea for centuries, and the incidents may be increasing with louder ship noise.^[6]

Reasons

Aside from the whaling industry, most cetaceans have no predators other than the orca (killer whale)^[7] and certain large sharks (such as the dusky^[8]), which in both cases tend to attack in groups and focus on one young whale. Some drift whale carcasses show injuries consistent with attacks from these species, or, in modern times, with ship strikes (e.g., trauma from a propeller).^[9][10] Another obvious and visible cause of traumatic death is cetacean bycatch, i.e., entanglement with fishing gear, which kills tens of thousands each year, according to the International Whaling Commission.^[11]

Other carcasses show no visible injury, and theories about why the animals died include the possibilities discussed for live strandings (especially active sonar) as well as illness and malnutrition.^[12] Sometimes a necroscopy is performed, which can reveal the cause of death, such as ingestion of plastic pollution and other Marine debris.^[13]

Locations

Certain beaches are well known as likely spots for whales, and other gifts from the sea, to wash up: drift seeds, driftwood, and latterly sea glass and even messages in bottles. Modern recreational beachcombers use knowledge of how storms, geography, ocean currents, and seasonal events determine the arrival and exposure of rare finds;^[14][15] the same applies to those looking out for drift whales.

Eponymous coastal features include Drift Whale Bay within Brooks Peninsula Provincial Park on the Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island.^[16][17] Saint-Clément-des-Baleines on the Atlantic coast of France is named after its stranding beach.

Scavenging versus hunting

People have been using drift whales for millennia, long before the beginning of active whaling.^[18] However, in relying on the archaeological record, the distinction between first scavenging and then hunting is not clear-cut.^[19][20]

Whales as windfall

A whale's massive carcass would provide a coastal community with considerable amounts of meat and fat, without the danger and effort of venturing onto the open ocean to harpoon a living leviathan.^[21] An additional resource, in the treeless Arctic, was the long bones, useful for construction. An even more specialised benefit is the occasional presence of ambergris in the guts of sperm whales; in 2021 a group of Yemeni fishermen sold their find for $1.5 million.^[22] Blubber used to be processed into whale oil.^[1] More generally, whale meat is still valued in some countries; muktuk (skin and blubber) is eaten uncooked as a delicacy in the Arctic, as fat is especially welcome in very cold climates.

The bounty and good fortune inherent in this find are recognised in etymology: "The meaning of the word 'drift-whale' in Icelandic, 'hvalreki,' has the same meaning as 'wind-fall' – an unexpected good incurred at no cost", according to

Coastal people around the world came up with a technique called dolphin drive hunting, which exploits the animals' tendency to beach themselves. This sort of hunt, which depends on substantial community co-operation, still continues in a few places, as far apart as the North Atlantic (Whaling in the Faroe Islands), the South Pacific (Malaita dolphin drive hunt), and Japan (Taiji dolphin drive hunt).

It is harder to find evidence, archaeological or ethnographic, of North American indigenous people hunting large whales before cultural contact with Europeans, according to scholars of the Atlantic^[25] and Pacific^[20] coasts.

From scavenging to hunting

The skills learned from processing drift whales, such as flensing (stripping the blubber), may have led to seeking out live ones. For example, the Makah of Washington State have been hunting gray whales for at least 1500 years, but were harvesting stranded whales for many centuries before that.^[26] On the other side of North America, drift whale scavenging on the Outer Banks of North Carolina led to organised hunts, documented at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.^[27]

When the early settlers arrived in New England, they saw from the deck of the Mayflower a huge number of whales, far more than they were accustomed to see in European waters, according to American historian W. Jeffrey Bolster.^[25]

March 1644, in

Tribes in Nantucket guarded and traded as sachem their ownership of drift whales assiduously. They were able to use their ownership and early treaties as a way to avoid royal taxes on the products.[30]

Both scavenging and hunting

Some communities both hunted and scavenged.

Wrapped in a thick blanket of blubber, the carcass retains its mammalian heat, and the process of decomposition takes place relatively quickly; once ashore, there is a risk of the swollen

Drift whales are a feature of fables and mythology. For example, William of Barkley Sound on Vancouver Island recounted tales to Edward Sapir, which were re-told by Kathryn Anne Bridge in a compendium about the Huu-ay-aht First Nations.^[34]

The chiefs of certain West Coast peoples built private sacred places, called whalers' washing houses, where they could

The neighbouring Nuu-chah-nulth and Makah peoples used similar shrines to pull drift whales to them.^[36]

Food resource

R. Lee Lyman [de] proposed that drift whales might have formed a considerable summer food resource for people living on the coast of what is now Oregon, before contact with Europeans.^[21][37]

Rights

Peoples that value whale meat and blubber have kept an eye out for drift whales, and traded the rights to them, for example bartering access to inland fishing rivers.^[21] Specific people may have hereditary rights to drift whales and a particular locale.^[34]

See also

• Globster

References