unexpect whale visit

[Sollins, Phil]

Book called Destroyer Commander (believe it or not, an interesting book)
tells of a Navy destroyer impaling a whale a few miles outside San
Francosco harbor.  Destroyer finally shook it off its bow, then sucked the
corpse through the props at full speed, esentially covering the stern with
whale debris.  They had Navy League spouses and kids on board at the time
who found the whole thing more than a little upsetting (though no doubt
suffering less than the whale).

-----Original Message-----
From: Kalli De Meyer [mailto:kdm at bonairelive.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2000 11:33 AM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: unexpect whale visit


Coral listers

Yesterday Bonaire saw the unexpected arrival of a Tropical Whale 
(Balaeonoptera edeni) aboard a cruise boat. It had been impaled on 
the bow of the vessel. The Captain of the vessel said they noticed 
nothing but ships log showed a slowing in their speed from which 
we can guess where the incident occured (15 miles SW of Los 
Aves island off the Venezuelan coast). 

As far as we could see it was an adult (12.4m) animal with nothing 
obviously wrong with it which could not be accounted for by the 
impact of the collision.

Does anyone know of any other such incidents or are we dealing 
with an isolated daft/unfortunate animal ??

Kalli De Meyer
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Email address for Kalli De Meyer is kdm at bonairelive.com
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