Bridlington whale: Watch moment contractors remove 25-tonne fin whale from Yorkshire beach after stranding death

UPDATE AT 5pm

A spokesman for East Riding of Yorkshire Council said: “We have now managed to move the whale’s body off the beach and onto a truck, strapped it down and carried it up a slipway. It will now be covered over and moved away from Bridlington in the next few hours.

“We’d like to say a big thank you to our contractors and our council staff for doing an absolutely outstanding job over the past few days.

“This has been an incredibly challenging and difficult operation – the largest of its kind we’ve ever dealt with.

“This was a really sad incident for all involved. The whale was about 17 metres long and weighed around 25-30 tonnes.

“The body will now be taken away by our contractors to be disposed of.”

As of approximately 2pm, a cordon around the sands and slipway remained in place as the operation had encountered difficulties transferring the whale, which has been attached to a special sledge, onto an exit ramp.

Once up the slipway, it will be craned onto a low loader supplied by Newark-based haulage specialists Hutchinson’s Engineering Services Ltd.

Several JCB plant vehicles worked in tandem to haul the sledge to the exit, with the aim of keeping the carcass intact. It will then be transported to a rendering plant or landfill site for disposal.

The juvenile male was still alive when it beached earlier this week, but died soon after. Its corpse has since become a macabre ‘tourist attraction’ and a police cordon guarded by security patrols was put in place to prevent interference with the mammal.

The operation is similar to one which took place in late 2020, when a pod of juvenile sperm whales died at Withernsea in a mass stranding. As one beached on East Riding Council-owned land, they were responsible, as with today, for its safe removal.

It is rare for fin whales, a notoriously large species, to enter the North Sea. The young male is likely to have died from malnutrition, and become disorientated when it entered shallow waters near Bridlington. Marine scientists were not able to access the body to take samples for laboratory testing before it was removed.