Death of a Minke whale, an eye witness account

By Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals inspector, Senior Inspector Ron Patterson

I first heard of the Minke in Scalloway harbour at lunchtime on Saturday 9th June. I had just completed a few jobs in the morning and as this was supposed to be a week-end off was expecting to get on with cutting my grass. On arriving home I played back a message on the answer machine this concerned a Minke whale going round in circles in Scalloway harbour.

I immediately set of for the harbour which is approximately ten minutes from my home, but failed to locate the animal.

Shortly afterwards I received another message with more precise details. This time it was located relatively easily.

The whale simply dived and moved round in circles. It never went deep as you could nearly always see its fins above the water. This is a very gut wrenching scenario as experience tells you that unfortunately a lone animal such as this is going to die. Occasionally it would surface close to where I was standing and it appeared that there was a rope around its neck.

(This turned out to be a sever laceration rather than a rope). Also from where we were standing it looked to be emaciated as every bone in its body was clearly visible.

Why don’t you get a boat and get the rope off?
I went back and forth all day usually monitoring for at least an hour on each visit. On occasions like this you receive all manners of advice from members of the public. The same question was asked frequently: Why don’t you get a boat and get the rope off? It sounds easy when you say it quickly, but in practise this was a non starter. On occasions such as this safety is paramount. Although the animal was half dead it would only have taken a flick from its hugely powerful tail to send human beings tumbling into the water. The advice that I passed onto onlookers was that the whale must be left alone free of stress to die in peace.

I left the whale on the Saturday evening at 22.00hrs. By then it was noticeable its demeanour had changed. It now appeared to be weaker and was swimming much slower. I also noticed it slipping into shallower water. At this moment my gut feeling was the animal was dying and desperately hoped its end would be quick free of stress and painless.

I arrived back at the harbour at approximately 07.30hrs the following morning. There was no sign of the animal for all intents and purposes it was gone. A few visits that morning with revealed the same, nothing.

Strangled by a plastic strip
On my way home received another message the body of the Minke whale had been located not far from where I had last seen it swimming the previous evening. The animal’s death was all the more galling when I noted what appeared to be the cause of death a piece of thin webbing which the animal had obviously managed to get over its neck probably when it was young. What we thought was rope round its neck was in fact lacerated skin.

All in all a very sad end to a magnificent creature which plainly did not deserve a death such as this.