It was a rare sight on the beach of Pointe Coton last Tuesday with a hostile crowd, who came to see this big white fish. Indeed, tourists, children, young and old came in droves to witness this event. It was the men from the Castel de Roche Bon Dieu fishery who discovered the white object floating in the lagoon near Le Fumier.
The Grande Montagne police were alerted and by 6am, the news spread like wildfire. The Commissioner of Fisheries, Louis Ange Perrine, was alerted. Police officers, officers from the CID, NIU, Coast Guard, members of REOC, the health department, and fisheries guards rushed to the coast. The Castel fishery with a dozen men and two pirogues were approached by the authority to move the sperm whale to a distance of just over 2 kilometres to the coast of Pointe Coton for burial. Two Coast Guard inflatable boats arrived with 3 divers and the various manoeuvres to move the sperm whale were undertaken in rough seas. The fifteen or so men manoeuvred the sperm whale with the help of ropes and made their way to the coast.
On the coast of Pointe Coton, about ten metres from the beach, a backhoe led by officers started to search in a perimeter forbidden by the police. The manoeuvre to pull the sperm whale ashore then began and the ropes piled around the whale broke. The backhoe seemed powerless and even got stuck in the sand at one point. Several attempts to move the sperm whale closer to the hole proved futile, and by noon it was still not possible. Then Jerry Kan John’s very powerful backhoe arrived and with the help of a strong rope, the heavyweight managed to bring the sperm whale to the beach despite the shifting sand. That’s it, the operation is successful. A man disinfects the sperm whale and the area. Heat is thrown into the hole and the backhoe pushes back the few tons of sand and completely covers the sperm whale, which has been badly damaged and decomposed.
This is the second sperm whale to be stranded in 4 months, after the first, larger whale washed up on the beach at Banana River. Members of Shoals Rodrigues took samples from the sperm whale for analysis.
