Whale washes up on beach as locals urged to avoid rotting corpse

09 May 2023 , 05:07

405     0

The minke whale was washed up on the beach at North Berwick, before being hauled away by a forklift truck (Image: East Lothian Council)

A dead whale has washed up onto a Scottish beach, not far from Edinburgh.

Believed to be a minke, the whale was swept up onto the sands at North Berwick, just a few miles east up the East Lothian coast from the capital, reports the Daily Record.

The decomposing creature was discovered on Sunday morning (May 7) and council officials had put a cordon round the animal, warning people to “maintain an appropriate distance”.

East Lothian Council have since arranged for the carcass to be removed from the beach – it was hauled away by a forklift truck and deposited in a tractor trailer and driven off the site.

The incident has been reported to the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) which will decide if further investigation is needed.

'Putting an actor in a fat suit to play an obese character is ableist hogwash'

The decomposing body of the whale was eventually removed from the beach (East Lothian Council)

SMASS is a dedicated research and reporting project for stranded cetaceans, pinnipeds, marine turtles and large sharks in Scotland.

The news follows a spate of whales found dead on Scottish shores in recent weeks. On May 4, a juvenile female humpback was found dead on a sandbank at Loch Fleet nature reserve.

Initial tests by SMASS determined that the creature had drowned after becoming tangled in creel lines.

On April 20, another minke washed ashore on a North Berwick beach. Staff at the Scottish Seabird Centre raised the alarm after they spotted the mammal floating in the water at high tide on Wednesday before it came ashore near the harbour.

Jordan Shepherd