Rescuers mull euthanizing stranded whale calf

Rescuers Wednesday were trying to decide whether a humpback whale calf stranded on an East Hampton beach could be safely euthanized.

Chuck Bowman, president of the marine mammal rescue program at the Riverhead Foundation, said his group was working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and others. It had ruled out a rescue of the whale, given its condition and the strength of the surf.

Rescuers were considering ways to euthanize the animal, which beached itself Tuesday morning a quarter-mile east of East Hampton's Main Beach, including what equipment might be needed and what drugs might be used, without endangering workers.

"One flip of its tail, you could break your arm, you could break your neck," Bowman said.

"It's dying, and there's not a whole lot we can do about that," he told Newsday in an interview. "We actually thought it was going to die last night."

The best outcome, Bowman says, would be for the whale to die of natural causes. But the group doesn't know the whale's illness or how long it could live. "It could be an hour, it could be 12 hours, it could be 24 hours," he said.

Even if the whale could be put down without endangering anyone, it would still take a long time to die, Bowman explained.

"People don't understand. In terms of euthanizing the whale, it's not like a dog or a cat. It's a much more complicated situation."

Shortly after noon Wednesday, police escorted members of the Shinnecock Nation's Thunderbird family to the water's edge for a ceremony. Shinnecock members were joined by members of other tribes, including the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina and the Ojibwe tribe from Wisconsin.

Dressed in traditional shawls, the tribal members sang four songs and prayed for the whale's spirit, "which is as big as all of us put together," tribal member Rebecca Genia said. "It's a sacred being to the Shinnecock people."

The whale is revered in Shinnecock culture, Genia said. "The whale was a gift from the great creator," providing Shinnecocks with food, shelter, tools and light, said Genia, who is on the Intertribal Historic Preservation Task Force.

The whale seemed to respond to the chanting, dancing and drums, turning to face tribal members and making faint wheezing sounds as they waved a bucket of incense, onlookers said. "It's our duty and responsibility to have ceremonies to honor and show respect for our sacred relatives," Genia said.

Shortly after 2 p.m., the whale was seen to raise its head and tail twice.

Yellow police tape and police officers were on hand Wednesday to keep back onlookers, who gathered on the beach and a nearby jetty to view the massive animal. Students from a local elementary school also visited the whale Wednesday morning.

The waves Wednesday appeared to be bigger, and a surfer at the beach said strong winds were expected to increase the swells through Thursday.

Late Tuesday, with more than 100 people watching, the mammal was thrashing about, groaning and flipping its tail. Bowman said the creature was probably having trouble breathing because of low tide.

The whale had probably became separated from its mother, said Bowman, who described the scenario as "really sad." Humpbacks are listed as an endangered species.

One of those watching, Heidi Pearson, professor of marine mammalogy at Stony Brook University in Southampton, said the young whale was "likely on its way from the breeding grounds in the Caribbean to the feeding grounds off the New England coast."

"It's always sad to see a young animal in distress, but luckily the population as a whole is recovering and getting healthy," Pearson said.

Dead whales do wash up occasionally on Long Island beaches, but "for a live whale to come onshore is far less common and usually they are very, very sick," Bowman said.

Village Police Officer Christopher Jack first spotted the whale about 300 yards off the beach at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday and contacted the Riverhead Foundation. The whale was estimated to be 20 to 25 feet long. An adult humpback whale is about 50 to 60 feet long, Bowman said.

Officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation were also at the beach. Village public works supervisor Scott Fithian, 51, said the whale would be buried in nearby dunes.

With Gordon M. Grant and John Valenti