Stuff You Should Know - Why Are Whale Strandings Still a Mystery?

Episode Date: June 8, 2017

For millennia, mass strandings of whales have confounded us. Why should dozens or more whales come onto shore only to die a terrible and lengthy death? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everybody, I know we've been sheepish about tour announcements lately, but we can finally announce our, well, let's just call it 2017, huh? Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo!

Our tour! Some cities we've been to, some are new, some it's been a while. Yeah, we are coming to cities all over the continental US and parts of Canada. If you live in either of those two places, there's a really good chance we're gonna be somewhere near you at some point this year, Chuck.

I'm psyched. We're kicking off in Toronto on August 8th at the Danforth Music Hall. It's gonna be great. And then the next day we're gonna be in beautiful Chicago on August 9th at the Harris Theater. And then the next day, August 9th at Danforth Music Hall in lovely Toronto, Canada, North America, Planet Earth.

Yep. And then where to next? So I don't know how about Vancouver on September 26th. And then the next day we're gonna be in Minneapolis on September 27th. Those are gonna be awesome. That is correct. Then we are going to take a nap.

And then we are going to wake up on October 10th in Austin, Texas. Wonder how the heck we got there. And then remember that we have to be at the Paramount Theater for our show. Yeah, that's called the Austin Wake Up. And then Chuck, the next day we're going to be for the first time ever in beautiful Lawrence, Kansas

at the Liberty Hall on October 11th. It's gonna be huge. And then equally huge is what's next. We have a special three night second home stand. We call it our second home. That's because it's the Bell House in beautiful Brooklyn, New York. October 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.

We're gonna be there three nights in a row. And finally, we're gonna wrap it up in true stuff you should know fashion here in Atlanta at the Buckhead Theater on November 4th. And this is gonna be a very special show. Stay tuned for more details, but it is going to be a charity benefit show. Yeah.

And not only are we donating 100% of our dough, we got our booking agent and venues and promoters and everyone is chipping in to donate large portions of their dough as well. So we're pretty excited about that. Yep, so it's gonna be a great tour, Chuck. We need to go get our rest. Yes, and you can go to sysklive.com

to get all your details, because that is our touring home on the web. And tickets are going on sale this Friday, June 9th. So visit sysklive.com for ticket links. And if the ticket link doesn't happen to be there, do not fret, just go to the theater homepage and you can find out all about it there. We'll see you on the road.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. DrumHouse.StuffWorks.com. Music Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Mr. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And? Roundly liked fella. And another roundly liked person,

Jerry Jerome Rowland. Me? People can take her leave me. What a weird start. Yeah, it's weird, but this is a weird episode, man. You think? Sure. It's mysterious, at least.

That mystery is weird. Yeah, mystery is weird. There. It's a t-shirt. Prove my point. Man, it's been a long time since we came up with a t-shirt. Well, yeah, since we pointed one out. Yeah.

For sure. Mystery is weird. Yeah. Josh Clark. SYSK. That's right. Or as some people say, S-U-S-K. I've never gotten that.

Well, you. Yeah, is it the text version? I don't know, I guess. I think it's just a mistake. I think so, too. It looks weird to each his own. That's another good t-shirt. Yeah.

Well, that's our motto here at Stuff You Should Know. To each their own. That's right. So, Chuck, back in February of this year, and not too terribly long ago, down in New Zealand at a beach called Farewell Spit in Golden Bay. It's on the top of the South Island of New Zealand.

Okay. Okay. They had a huge, huge mass stranding of whales, pilot whales, to be specific. About 600, and about 400 died. Imagine that. It's the saddest thing you can see. Well, yeah, there's, you know, one of them.

There's a, I was reading an article, I think it was from the Guardian that was basically on location, interviewing people down there. And they were like, this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. It's never experienced anything worse than this. There's dead pilot whales everywhere,

dying pilot whales everywhere. And apparently the local authorities put out a call to people living in the area saying like, cancel school, call in sick to work. Like we need your help down here. And there's this group called Project Jonah. That's a New Zealand, basically a whale rescue group. And it's pretty appropriate that they're from New Zealand

because from what I understand, New Zealand has the highest incidence of whale strandings or I think even cetacean strandings, which, you know, is any kind of cetacean ending up on a beach in the world. But the, as the International Whaling Commission puts it, any country with a coastline has, it's gonna have a problem with mass strandings of whales.

Happened in Germany. It did happen in Germany, which is not landlocked, it turns out. Yeah, it's just heartbreaking to see these beautiful humongous creatures just laying there, dying an awful, awful death. Yeah. And there's a lot of, like I said, mystery to the whole thing.

We're not entirely certain why whales end up stranded, especially on mass. There's a lot of pretty good hypotheses, some of which are probably true. There's probably multiple explanations, but there is definitely some weirdness to it still. And then there's a lot of debate about what exactly you should do during a whale stranding.

Should you help them, should you kill them? And then- How should you kill them? Yeah, exactly. And then there's a lot of debate also about what exactly you should do with a dead whale stranded on the beach because those things, you don't just flush them down the toilet.

No. They're pretty big. Yeah, and when I said dying an awful death, they, well, there's a lot of things that happen. Their skin burns. Yeah, they have a very soft, sensitive skin. Yeah, so just to be out there in the sun like that, they equated it to like a third degree burn on a human.

Right. Just laying there in the sun. Seagulls come in and don't even wait for them to die. And apparently have a thing for going for the eyeballs. Yeah. And a dying live whale having its skin burn and eyeballs picked out. Yep, that's a big problem.

And then you also, I didn't think about this, but so a whale is a marine mammal, right? They come up to breathe. Yeah. But they're equipped to be in the water where gravity is less. Yeah, they're huge. And so they need that water to,

well, when they go and land, big problems happen. Yeah, they encounter the pressure of gravity pressing down on them. They actually start to suffocate under their own weight. The big problem is, is while they're laying there on the beach, it takes them a very long time to suffocate. They have a tremendous, obviously tremendous reserve of blubber.

So they don't starve to death first. So they very infrequently do. So over the course of days, possibly even weeks, they're laying there suffocating under the weight of gravity being crushed by their own blubber. Yeah, and their own organs being crushed under their own weight. So it's a bad jam.

It's a pretty bad scene. Yeah, it's just really, really sad. And to fully understand how to help whales and other cetaceans from becoming stranded in the first place, we have to understand why they become stranded. And there's a lot of investigation into this. But apparently it's nothing new from what I've seen.

As long as humans have been keeping records, there have been reports of mass whale strandings all over the world. Yeah, and you cobble together quite a few articles for this. One of the really good ones was what causes whale mass strandings from the conversation by Robin Grace. And she points out that, like you said, this has been going on forever since people

have been writing it down. And lots, all different kind of species of whales this can happen to, and dolphins and other cetaceans. But she said short finned pilot whales are the most frequent. Or he, I guess. It could be like that guy from Cheers. It is ROBYN. Oh, that's always a she, right?

No, Robin Hitchcock spells his name with a Y, doesn't he? Oh, what a confusing world. I talked to him in an elevator at the sketch fest last year. Really? Yeah. Were the Egyptians with him? No.

Wait, wasn't he in the band? What band? The band. No. Oh, what was he in originally? I don't know. He was in a major band like that first. Huh.

I wonder. He's definitely not in the band. He's English. OK. Sorry. Where were we? Oh, yeah, yeah. So pilot whales, short finned pilot whales

are the most frequent strandies, I guess. False killer whales, melon-headed whales. Poor melon-headed whales. I know that name. The Kuvii Beaked Whale and Sperm Whales. These are all very much deep sea dwellers. Right. Very social fish.

And this is one of the problems is they hang out together in the hundreds. Right. So one of the thoughts, and like you said, there are a lot of different hypotheses. But one of the thoughts when they see these mass strandings is whatever, and we'll talk about what might get that first whale there,

whether it was just sick or confused or out of its depth trying to go for some prey, like out of its comfort zone. Literally out of its depth. Yeah. But maybe the other hundreds are just tagging along. Right. So there's this big drive, especially

among environmental protection groups, to say this is human-caused in large part. And there is a whole branch of strandings that probably are that actually almost certainly can be accounted or chalked up to human activity. But there's also a big, wide portion of animal strandings, cetacean strandings, that appear to be natural in nature, right?

Yeah. And so some of those hypotheses are that initially, like one whale or something was sick or maybe injured and came in toward shallower water so it could come up to surface for air more easily. Sure. And went in a little too shallow and got trapped there. It's possible that a pod of whales

were chasing some very valuable prey into areas that they weren't familiar with that were too shallow. And they got stranded there as well. And there's a couple of parts to this that make the whole thing make sense a little more. One is that echolocation that is part of, it's basically the number one sense that marine mammals use. Yeah.

It doesn't work very well in shallow waters, right? Yeah. So this is their navigational aid. They get into these shallower waters. Like you said, maybe they were chasing something to eat. All of a sudden, they find themselves out of place. They don't know which way to go. So they inadvertently swim toward the shore.

Right. And accidentally beach. And maybe they've got hanging out with 20 or 30 pals because they're social. Right. Which makes it all so sad. That's a big cue, though, or a big clue that these are deep sea marine mammals that

strand on gently sloping sandy areas. Yeah, and they found some, I guess, anecdotal evidence. Some whales in the North Sea that were beached or stranded had recently digested oceanic squid. So they thought, well, maybe they had gone and chased in the squid, had just eaten it, and didn't know which way to go to get out of there. Yeah.

They got confused. And that's another thing that people who have been on the scene of mass whale strandings report is that the whales often seem to be disoriented or disorientated depending on where you're from. Oh, that's right. Wasn't that a thing on the show? I think it's UK-ish.

This is disorientated. UK-ish? Yeah. Should we take a break now? Sure. All right, we'll take a break and talk a little bit more about the natural causes and also about potential man-made causes.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week

to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, one thing that you hit upon is that the whales are very, very social. Yeah. And so there's this idea that if one becomes stranded, especially if this is a leader that's leading a pod, if they become lost or disoriented,

as long as they're stranded, the other members of the pod of this extremely social, tight-knit group are going to hang around and stick with that one. Yeah. There's also an idea that ones that are sick or injured, if they go off and become stranded, that even if the ones that follow them aren't lost, they're there because of the social bonds.

Like, they're there to provide support, or because they care. It's called the social caring hypothesis, this idea that whales allow themselves to become stranded because a member of their pod has become stranded, and they're worried about them, basically. Yeah. So obviously, there are a lot of people around the world

that care a lot about this and are trying to work to just learn more about how to handle this. And in last year, there was a workshop held to discuss how to practically handle these strandings. And so it concluded that they had an international strandings network. They were going to establish this. And I guess they're in the process of doing that now.

Basically, stranding experts from all these different countries where it happens partnering up with something called the entanglement network to basically share information on best practices and just get a little more organized with how they can best help this situation. Right. So it's good that they're doing something about it. One of the other things that very recently,

I think within the last year or two, has been finally handled was this longstanding issue of whether or not sonar that's used by navies around the world leads to strandings of whales. Yeah, in 1996, this was the first time this connection was made. There was a NATO military exercise off the coast of Greece, which coincided with the stranding

of 12 coupiers-beaked whales. Another one in May 2000 in the Bahamas. Loud mid-frequency sonar stranded a number of whales. And for those, they did some examinations and found hemorrhaging in the inner ear. Right. That indicated acoustic trauma, which is just devastating. Right.

And there were NATO or either NATO or US Navy sonar exercises that had been conducted right there. Right? Oh, yeah. And then in 2002, a group of beaked whales landed in the Canary Islands. And they were examined. And this has raised a really big mystery as well.

Some of them showed signs of what we would call the bends, submersion sickness. Yeah, which you would not think that a marine mammal would ever have a problem with. No, because they've developed, well, they've adapted to be able to die very quickly and rise very quickly. But they think that probably something

about acute sonar, which is basically just getting hit by a blast of high-frequency, short-duration sound waves, causes them to either swim away. This is the current hypothesis. There is a New York Times article called The Search for Clues to What Causes Whale Strandings. And it talks about this study that was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology in 2017.

And the study, who's carried out by Terry Williams, basically says that sonar goes off nearby some whales or cetaceans. They try to get away as fast as they can. As they do, they expend about double the amount of energy they normally would swimming. And they lose oxygen to their brain. In the meantime, carbon dioxide starts

to build, which allows bubbles to form in their tissues, including their brain, which is bends, decompression sickness. So it's not like sonar causes the bends, but indirectly they think leads to the bends by disrupting the whale or cetaceans' ability to dive or rise very quickly without decompression sickness. Yeah, and that study was pretty important, because I think for a long time, people just thought,

well, they're fish. They can swim endlessly. And it's not a problem, because they're marine mammals or fish, and that's what they do. But it's sort of a no-brainer that they can get tired just like anything else. And they confirm that in studies. If they sprint, basically, they are essentially getting tired.

And if they're sprinting to avoid sonar, then that's a problem. Yep. And so as a result, the Navy entered into an agreement to not conduct these trials or sonar exercises or underwater explosions around Hawaii or Southern California, which are extremely important reproducing and feeding grounds for whales of all types.

And there's some resident populations there. But they finally said, OK, all right, fine. We're not going to do that anymore around there, which is a big deal. Yeah, sea quakes are another underwater sound, like really intense thing that can affect them beyond sonar. So it's not always just man-made sounds. No, but there is another type of man-made sound

that's a big problem called chronic underwater noise that is created by things like shipping or industry, that kind of thing, where it's not necessarily this high intensity, but it's pretty much constant. And it can drive cetaceans nuts. Because again, we use our eyes. They use their ears. And if you have a huge loud sound or a constant loud sound,

it makes it difficult for you to do things like hit on a lady whale when it's time to reproduce. Well, yeah, we've mostly been talking about whales, but there was this one anecdotal story of these dolphins, short-beaked common dolphin that this one researcher found. And this kind of lends itself to the fact that they will travel together if one of them is hurt. And this is at the TfE Estuary, West Wales.

And he found these two dolphins on the beach. And one of them was sick. A post-mortem reveal that had a heavy, long parasite infection that affected its breathing. But the other one apparently was not sick, but remained close to its little buddy in distress, like whistling frequently. So man, that's just heartbreaking.

I was like, Ted, Ted, stay with me. There's Ted. Ted's the dying dolphin. Oh, OK. I thought that was a reference to something. Just Ted the dolphin. Yeah. Gotcha.

Did you ever hear about the researcher? Surely we've talked about that the dolphin researcher who took acid with dolphins, like gave acid to dolphins and dropped it himself. I don't think so. Build a house. And I think the Bahamas that could be flooded so the dolphins could come live in the house with them,

I believe, tried to or successfully his research assistant did it with the dolphin. Had sex with the dolphin. That's another way to put it. This is real. I've definitely never heard this story. Yeah. I think that one might deserve its own episode.

It happened. The man who did acid and did sex with dolphins. I think his research assistant, a female, did it with dolphins. Or at least came close. There was like a. You showed this one a fever dream. It sounds like it.

It must have seemed like it down in the Bahamas at the time. Wow. Yeah, we'll do an episode on it. OK. So it feels like science is hot on the trail of cetacean strandings of figuring out what causes it. There's a lot of different causes. Yeah, it's probably all that stuff, I think.

Yeah, probably. But there's a big issue still to be discussed. And that is that if you have a dolphin stranding or a whale stranding and you've got some that have died naturally, but you still have some that are alive, what do you do? Well, there's this group in New Zealand called Project Jonah. They have guidelines for the average person of how to keep a cetacean that's been stranded or beached.

How to keep it comfortable, how to keep it alive. Yeah, a dolphin, obviously, is more savable. Sure. And more savable not only because they're smaller, but frankly, it's unsafe to go too close to a beached whale. Right, that's why I was really surprised that this group was putting out guidelines telling you how to care for a beached whale.

It's an extremely dangerous thing to get near a beached whale, especially by the tail. Yeah, I mean, an accident can easily happen and they're so strong. Sure, and they're agitated. They're scared out of their minds. It's a dangerous thing. So there's a lot of discussion about what do you do?

Well, some people say, well, you reflow them. You get them out there as fast as possible. But apparently, it is hard to do. And also, to an untrained person, you can't really spot a gravely injured, internally injured cetacean just by looking at it. So you may be pushing it back out to sea and being like, go, go live when really they're going, going

to have a long, prolonged death at sea because they're dying of internal injuries. The prevailing idea, it seems like, at least among scientists, is that you should probably euthanize, especially a whale. Dolphins, yeah, you can probably reflow them. A whale, once it becomes beached, it's probably a goner. So say most scientists that I've come across.

And so you would euthanize them. But then this raises the whole issue. How do you humanely kill a whale? Where do you get a guillotine that big? Yeah, and you know what? We'll talk about what they've come up with right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS,

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, so where we left off was, sadly, oftentimes, the most humane thing to do would be to put one of these whales out of their misery immediately, or as quickly as possible. Sure. And so how do you do this safely? They've tried a variety of drugs over the years, some to greater success than others. One drug they tried was good old phenobarbital.

The problem with phenobarbital is that it doesn't just leave the whale immediately. It can stay in the whale system and then go into other places, like a dog. Yeah, it doesn't break down in the environment. And there was a case of a dog being fed whale meat and falling into a coma because of the bar, the, the barbiturates.

Yeah. That had, I mean, like, it takes a truckload of barbiturates to euthanize a whale, right? Sure. So this dog eating this meat and falling into a coma, it was to be expected. Luckily, the dog recovered after having its stomach pump twice. But I mean, what a cluster of a day that was all around.

You've got to euthanize a whale, and then your dog falls into a coma when you feed it the whale, and you're just trying to complete the circle of life, you know? Well, yeah, and don't you need special permission to use phenobarbital anyway? Yes. It's not like the kind of thing you can just, you know,

order up. No, these are, like, significant drugs. And actually, there was a, there's a protocol that was recently developed and published in a journal of a, a sequence of drug administrations that keep, that will kill a whale, but it will do it very humanely and actually quite safely, too. These very clever scientists figured out

how to use drugs to kill a whale. And it's very much like the drug cocktail that they give to prisoners in the United States when, for the death penalty. Yeah, I mean, it's taken them a while to find the correct mix of drugs that won't, that are safe to use, that won't agitate the whale further, that will kill them quickly.

So a lot of, like, kind of experimentation has gone on. And what they finally came up with was four drugs. Medazolam. I think that's like Ativan. OK. Thumbs up on that. Acipromazine. I think that's like Bayer.

OK. Exalazine. That's ecstasy. And potassium chloride. That is special K, the cereal. And that needs to be administered sequentially, I believe, in that order, correct? Yeah, because one of them, what was the one with the X?

Exalazine. OK, so that one. Exilazine. Yeah, maybe Orzacilazine. Anytime something starts with reconsonance, I just get thrown. It's a tough one. Yeah.

But if you just give that to a whale, it's a sedative, I believe. No, it's a painkiller, I'm sorry. But it can cause thrashing. That is extremely dangerous. A whale's tail is already dangerous enough when it's stranded. If you give it a drug that makes it involuntarily thrash,

you're in big trouble. But they found that if they administer that stuff after the other two, it won't cause thrashing, but will have the pain killing effect. Yeah, so the medazolam and the acipromazine, they use already in veterinary services for horses and dogs to calm them down. And when you have a dog put down,

they don't give just one shot. That's a couple of shots. Yeah, ideally. Yeah. They don't even give humans a couple of shots these days. Yeah, so they do this with dogs. They give one to calm the dog down and then one to stop the heartbeat.

Right, and the potassium chloride, the final thing is the one that stops the whale's heart, I believe. Yes, the exalazine is the pain relief and anesthesia. And then that final potassium chloride is what does it. So the guys who came up with this protocol also developed needles, like industrial-sized needles, that can be used, they're attached to garden sprayers.

Yeah, that's nuts. Right, so you put all the drugs in these garden sprayers and then you attach a needle to it. And the great thing about the needles is that you can insert the needles into the veins that are around the fins. You don't need to go near the arteries, which the main artery connects the tail of the body.

So it's much safer to administer these drugs because you're working by the fin, which is much less dangerous than, say, working by the tail. And apparently, I don't think that they've actually used this protocol on any cetacean yet, but... So it's kind of brand new. It is brand new, but they are feeling pretty good about it. As good as you can feel about coming up

with a cocktail of drugs to kill a whale. Yeah. But that's just one way of euthanizing whales. There's other ones. People shoot them with shotguns. Yeah, there are certainly more primitive attempts that are primitive. Yeah, it is.

And there's actually a protocol for shooting a whale. And you want to use very high-caliber bullets, projectiles. And if you don't, you're just going to hurt that whale because they have a really, really strong skull that's really tough to penetrate. So there's this thing that's been developed called the SWED, the sperm whale euthanasia device. Sperm whales have a very thick skull.

They're huge whales. And this thing is a modified World War II 14.5-millimeter Russian anti-tank gun that's been developed just to euthanize sperm whales by shooting them in the head with this thing. Yeah, I'm going to go with the drug cocktail. There's also ex-anguination, which is if you don't have a drug cocktail

and you've got a whale, you don't have an anti-tank gun, you don't have a drug cocktail, the preferred method is to ex-anguinate the whale by cutting that major artery that connects the tail to its body and basically just letting it bleed out, which is sad, but it's better than dying while your skin is burning off. Yeah, and seagulls are eating your eyeballs. Right.

And so we'll finish with the problem of what to do with that dead whale. And something that happened in November 1970, November 12, specifically, in Oregon, a lot of people think that it was a made-up story, that they blew up a whale, but it really happened. Right. And there's actually grainy footage of it on YouTube.

Yeah, 1970 news footage from WKATUTV, right? Because it's West, so it's K. Oh, is that what that is? Yeah. W's the East, K's the West. I never knew that. Yeah. So you've got an 8-ton, 40-foot long sperm whale.

This is from Snopes, correct? Yes. And apparently Snopes did the real research, because there was this long-published article that everyone kind of referenced over and over, as people do on the internet. And they realized, they were like, no one ever really called the people that actually did this.

So let's do that. And they did. They talked to a guy named Ed. Because it kept coming up on the internet, and people thought it was number one, and it just happened. And then number two, that it was a hoax and an urban legend. And an actual urban legend developed out of the real thing.

Correct. The real story is that on November 12, 1970, an 8-ton, 45-foot long sperm whale, which was dead, washed up in Florence, Oregon, and was a dead whale. Eventually, it will smell a lot. That's a big problem. And not only that, it poses a big problem in that if you have a whale that's still

partially in the surf, those sharks come to feed on it, and they'll attack anything around there. So it's a huge public health problem if you have a big, dead whale on your beach. Absolutely. So they think, all right, we need to get rid of this thing. What do we do? Who do we call?

The Oregon Beach is public right of way. So oddly enough, they went to the State Highway Division to clean this up. So they consulted the Department of the Navy, and the Navy said, blow it up. Yeah, this guy named George Thornton was the guy whose shoulders it fell on. He was with the Highway Division.

And he was like, all right, we'll blow it up. I mean, it made sense at the time. They blew up huge boulders that weighed about the same. And that's what they used to calculate how much dynamite to blow this whale up. Yeah, I mean, in the weirdest way, it did make sense. It totally did. Like, they calculated that they would

need a half a ton of dynamite, 20 crates worth. And they thought, well, if we stuff the stuff on the landward side of the whale, it'll blow it out to sea, basically. No muss, no fuss. Going to blow it to smithereens. And then we'll just leave it for the seagulls and the crabs.

And I think the quote was the crabs and the seagulls and whatnot to eat the tiny particles of blubber. Like you said, no fuss, no must. So on November 12, 1970, there were a group of a couple dozen onlookers who came to see this work got out around Florence, Oregon that they were going to blow a whale up. I'm sure that was a pretty fun thing to do in Florence, Oregon

that day. Right. So people came out to see and Channel 2 KAT used Paul Lindman, reported on the scene. And he did the whole thing very tongue-in-cheek. This is right out of the gate. They're going to blow a whale up with half a ton of dynamite. This guy got the hilarious-ness inherent in the idea.

It's like right out of Anchorman. Pretty much. And so he called in. Everybody went and hid behind the dunes about a quarter of a mile away. Not far enough. No. They blew the thing.

And you got to see this footage. Just look up Exploding Whale on YouTube. It was a huge explosion. And everybody's watching. And they're like, yeah, somebody goes, whee. And then all of a sudden, they're like, oh. I think a woman says, oh, god. As whale parts just start raining down on everybody.

Yeah, it's like that scene in Tremors. When they finally blew up one of the Tremors. And they just start getting, of course, in Tremors. So it was that kind of orange, blood orange pulp. One of the Graboids. Is that what they were called? That's what the store owner, the little store owner guy, called them.

They were trying to think of what he called me. He's like, what about Graboids? Great movie. Yeah, so it basically rained down whale blubber. Some in larger pieces than others. And it's remarkable nobody got hurt. Because a three foot by five foot piece landed on a Buick owned by Walter Umenhofer.

And they showed the car. It crushed his car. Had he been sitting in that, he would have been dead as a doornail. Oh, yeah. Like, it's really lucky no one got killed. Yeah, that could have squashed somebody easy. Sure.

And so everybody is sitting there wiping whale blubber and guts and gristle off of their faces. And they look over, and most of the whale is still there. It definitely vaporized part of the whale, but most of it was still there. So they just buried it on the beach, which is one thing you can do with the whale. You can bury it on the beach.

You can take it to a landfill. You can drag it out to sea. That's the preferred thing. Just to pick it up to a boat and pull it out. And then let it sink, which is the natural thing. There's something called a whale fall, which creates like a temporary ecosystem on the sea floor that attracts a bunch of different organisms that

eat the whale, right? But it's illegal in the US to tow a whale that's been put down with barbiturates out to sea, because remember, those don't break down. So you've got secondary toxicity. So if you put a whale down with a cocktail in the US, you have to render it, burn it, or bury it in a landfill. You can't take it out to sea.

But if you just shoot it in the head, you can drag it out to sea and let it sink. Interesting. There's a lot of math to be done with dragging it out to sea. Sure. Because ostensibly, you would tie a rope around its tail. Yeah. Pull it out, where it would drag along the sea floor.

Well, hopefully it would float. Would it? Sure it would. And the reason why is another reason why a dead whale is super dangerous, because as they decompose, gas builds up. Just like they do in a decomposing human. And then they explode on their own sometimes, too.

That you don't want to be standing near either. All right. So I guess it has to float, because otherwise, eventually, it would start pulling that boat down with it. Sure. At which point, you would definitely want to cut bait. Yes, literally. You got anything else?

No, it's a very sad thing. And I'm glad that there are people who dedicate their lives to this kind of thing. Yeah, if you're into that, if you hear that as a calling, go check out Project Jonah's website. They will be right up your alley. You'll probably end up moving to New Zealand, which I can attest is a great, great place to visit.

I want to go. It's great. And here, it's friendly and safe. Yes. And I've heard it compared to the United States in the 1950s. As far as friendliness and safety? Yeah, and just sort of a bit of a throwback in the best ways.

That's what friends of mine have said. OK. Or maybe they just mean everyone's drunk all day long. Maybe. And doing drugs and having a good time. That's all that happened in the 50s. There's a town in there that was built in art, like completely art deco in the 1930s.

Are they talking about that? Did they use art deco to describe it? No, this is just New Zealand as a whole. OK, well, check it out. We'll have to go there on a tour someday. Absolutely. OK. Well, since I said we'll go there on tour someday,

it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a general email of interest. OK. That's a good one. Hello, Josh, Chuck, and Jerry. Hello. I cannot remember the name of the podcast where there is a crazy doctor.

Oh, I remember what this was. Not Uncle Shlomo, who got run out of multiple towns, starts up multiple practices, and possibly loses his license multiple times. I know if I could remember exactly what he was doing to get run out of these towns, I would remember the podcast. But the ripe age of 20, it is lost. Do you remember it?

No. I was hoping that you would know and that we could delight this Listener. I think this guy is confusing us with stuff to blow your mind. Well, it's a lady, I think. Well, this lady. You think? I don't know.

It happens from time to time. I'm going to finish the email anyway. OK. I know that it's on my list of favorites among Satanic Panic of the 80s. Great one. Great one. Operation Mincemeat.

Another good one. How bars work. OK, so this is a Listener. Public relations. Yeah, man. And Kitty Genovese. Yep. Boy, those are all some of my favorites too.

They are. And of course, the time you guys partied with Billy Boy Gates. That was a great party. You guys always brighten my day and lead me to become a person whose slogan is, so I heard on this podcast dot, dot, dot. There's a t-shirt. I'm an architecture student from Auburn University, War Eagle,

even if you don't want to. Or Tigers. Yeah, see, that's just weird. Yeah, I know. That's dumb. Two, make up your mind, Auburn. And I've listened to you all to keep me going through countless late hours, early mornings and days

when I don't ever leave my studio desk. Also, I have forced many of my classmates to listen to you. Shout out to fellow listener and classmate, Corey Sub-Sasic. Pronounce Sue Basic. Sub-Sasic. Yep. Man, I threw all kinds of letters in there.

Sure. Corey Sue Basic. If you read this on the listener mail, shout out, Corey. And I always suggest the Satanic Panic is the first episode. Yeah, that's a good starter. Yeah, I agree. Anyway, guys, please help me remember my favorite episode and have just a remarkable day.

Best of luck to you all and your prospective children and spouses. I don't think she means prospective children, does she? I think she's been in architecture too long. I think prospective children mean children that have yet to be born. Sure. I don't think that's happening any time soon.

Little angels. That is from Livia Barrett. She said, sign out. Birmingham, Alabama would love to have you. You've performed in Birmingham. Yeah, that was a great show. It was a great show. Maybe we'll come back to you today.

To the great work plate theater there. Yeah. It's a very warm reception. I can't remember, so what I'm hoping is someone writes in. I do too. About the crazy doctor who got run out of multiple towns, started multiple practices, and possibly was his license multiple times.

No idea. Yeah. I mean, not a clue. If anyone can remember that and write in, tell us. We will answer Livia back again on the air, and then read your email. Oh, well, there you go. That's a heck of a deal, Chuck.

Yeah. Well, if you have Livia's answer, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can also hang out with me. I'm at Josh M. Clark on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email, the Stuff Podcast,

theHouseToWorks.com. And as always, turn to the home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

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Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.