No luck locating the dead whale spotted north of the Deep Horizon well; We are ready should a similar event occur: ODYSSEY Gulf Blog (from the lab), November 11-14, 2010

So what happened with the dead whale? Well, by Thursday morning, Jane and Carolyne had joined our list of volunteers and Captain Bob and Rick were ready to go. We tried and tried to get specific GPS coordinates out of NOAA about the dead sperm whale, but to no avail. I am sure they wondered just how we knew. We will keep that a secret. The ultimate story was that a dead sperm whale was spotted by air floating about 10 miles north of the location of the Deep Horizon accident. BP contacted NOAA and informed them of it. As the Gordon Gunter was within a few miles, it ceased its planned activities and search from dawn to dusk, but could not locate it so they resumed normal activities.
We tried to contact the pilot group that had offered to help us to see if they could fly over, but could not reach them. Thus, given the time that has passed making it likely the whale has sunk or been eaten or carried some distance by current, we will not go as it is likely we cannot find it. But, we are ready should another event like this one occur.
The bulk of the week was spent reintegrating into our daily lab work and meeting with my graduate students about their progress and work. They are doing well and I will tell you about them more as we go. The week ended tonight at an awards banquet with Cathy winning a William B. Wise award (no relation that we know of) for being an athlete with a 3.0 or greater grade point average over the last school year. The upcoming week has us in Kentucky presenting our human studies at a metal conference and then in Illinois for a few days.
I’ll keep you posted.
John
(Blog by: John Wise, Science Director)