Carcass of Keiko the whale could pose environmental threat

OSLO (AFP) ^ | 1-10-2004

[Trailer Trash]

Carcass of Keiko the whale could pose environmental threat

54 minutes ago

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OSLO (AFP) - Keiko the whale, the star of the 'Free Willy' movies who died last month of pneumonia and was buried in Norway, could pose an environmental hazard, Norwegian environmentalists warned.

AFP/Scanpix/File Photo

The six-tonne carcass of the killer whale could contain about half a kilo of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) that have been absorbed and built up over the 27 years of his life.

Kaare Olerud, spokesman for the Norwegian Organisation for the Protection of Nature, said its decomposition could pollute his burial site or even the groundwater.

"It's a potential threat, nothing has been done to prevent it," he told AFP.

"But we wanted to use Keiko's fame to draw the public's attention to the threat of sea pollution by toxic products and its repercussions for the whole food chain," he added.

Due to his celebrity status, the killer whale was buried on land after suddenly succumbing to pneumonia in December, despite a tradition which dictates that sea mammals find their final resting place at sea.

The killer whale was captured in 1979 off the coast of Iceland when he was about two years old.

He spent most of his life in captivity, mostly in water theme parks and starring in movies, including the 'Free Willy' trilogy about a boy trying to free a whale from captivity.

The warning comes a day after US and Canadian researchers said that farmed salmon contained significantly higher levels of toxic substances than the more expensive wild variety.

[Trailer Trash]

Another 'Willy' legacy in trouble.

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[Dog Gone]

"But we wanted to use Keiko's fame to draw the public's attention to the threat of sea pollution by toxic products and its repercussions for the whole food chain," he added.

In other words, we have no evidence but we wanted to get some shameless free publicity.

[NoSoupForYou]

They should have chopped him up and served him out as Keiko-burgers. That would have dispersed the PCBs around.

[primeval patriot]

The Infamous Exploding Whale

[EggsAckley]

The silliness continues........

[Batrachian]

What's really shocking is that there are people out there who are concerned about this.

[VOA]

Carcass of Keiko the whale could pose environmental threat

Send a bill to the enviro-wackos who insisted that he be "set free"...
over the objections of the folks at SeaWorld (at least I think it was a SeaWorld
official I saw on TV news shaking his head at the sad odyssey of the liberated whale.)

[toddst]

What's really shocking is that there are people out there who are concerned about this.

Better they stay focused on such silliness as opposed to doing something that causes real problems for humanity. Of course, I feel their pain - not!

[uglybiker]

Studies have shown that exploding whales can be hazardous to Oldsmobiles.

[Rebelbase]

A similar size whale washed up on the beach at Drum Inlet, NC last winter. The park service left it to rot and closed off the inlet area to vehicle traffic for a while. It stunk for about 2 months. By August there were only a few large bones left.

[rickmichaels]

I heard that a 200 lb. chunk of blubber crashed through a Cadillac's windshield. The car was practically destroyed.

[primeval patriot]

I didn't mean to hi-jack the thread but yes, they're lucky someone wasn't killed.

[nhoward14]

OMG!!! I don't know what is better... the sheer brazeness to try to dispose of the whale like that or the hate mail letters the guy got for archiving the footage.

[Cicero]

So they pretended that burying the whale was an act of environmental piety, but they actually buried it because they KNEW it was full of PCBs. Then that would allow them to complain about the environmental dangers afterward. And just who was responsible for said environmental dangers?

Maybe if they hadn't freed Willy he wouldn't be full of PCBs. It's the law of unintended consequences. But in this case it all seems to have been intended, so they could blame it on polluters. The next step will be to fault Bush for killing the Kyoto Treaty.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[chimera]

A similar size whale washed up on the beach at Drum Inlet, NC last winter. The park service left it to rot and closed off the inlet area to vehicle traffic for a while. It stunk for about 2 months. By August there were only a few large bones left.

There you go, natural disposal. Nature has been taking care of this kind of thing since life evolved. I don't know what these so-called environmentalists didn't do a burial at sea for the poor thing. They could have had a decent "service" for those with emotional ties to the animal, then cut him loose to rejoin the great circle of life. Back to nature, and all that. I think they mucked it up by burying a creature on land whose natural habitat was the sea. Things recycle pretty fast out there. Even if his carcass eventually washed up on land, do what the good folks in NC did, rope off the area and let nature take its course. The gulls and crabs were probably very content (and efficiently disposing of the remains).

[Larry Lucido]

Welcome to FR!

[MotleyGirl70]

:)

Notice how New posts to you sounds alot like

No Soup For You!!!!

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

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