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And we can get bigger. Occasionally, one stumbles upon the gigantic and the outsize on the beach.


http://www.columbiariversealions.com/my-first-sperm-whale/.

Anthropocentrically speaking, the ratio of a full-grown male sperm whale to a six-foot human is 700:1.

The only way for a beachcomber to “collect” such a find is with a photograph. Unless one happens to be carrying a chain saw.…

One June day about ten years ago on Martha’s Vineyard, I kayaked over Chilmark Salt Pond to the barrier beach on the Atlantic. I could see dozens of gulls wheeling over the high dunes.

It wasn’t until I climbed over the dunes that I saw what was attracting the gull’s interest. A huge, dead, stinking, rotting, whale.

Here's a pilot whale on the same beach in 2012.

The Environmental Police of Massachusetts (and mostly everyone…

"Māori traditionally treasured stranded whales for their jawbones, which were used for carving. When three sperm whales beached and died at Paekakariki in March 1996, Māori from the region removed the jawbones from two of the three. The third whale…

"In his _Life_ of the abbot Philibert of Jumièges (c. 608–684), Ermantarius of Noirmoutier recounts that the abbot had prayed for oil for lamps and that 'a monk came and announced that the sea had left a dead fish . . . on the shore; from its flesh…

The _Gulaþing_ was an annual parliament held at Gulen on the west coast of Norway from c. 900-1300 C.E. The _Gulaþinglova_ (law), legislation compiled over the centuries and extant in the _Codex Ranzovianus_ (1250), contains this:

"A hauld or a…

_Grettir’s Saga_, or the _Saga of Grettir the Strong_ (_Grettis saga Ásmundarsona_r) (14th c.)

"I’ve heard how steely weapons were used, when whale-blubber was wielded at Rif Skerries. The fighters kept exchanging lethal whale-meat missiles.…