"On January 10, during the third week of the ongoing government shutdown, a dead sperm whale carcass was spotted floating about a mile off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Tiger sharks had reportedly already discovered the carcass and were feeding on its partially-dismembered body. The carcass later washed up on the beach, and a little more than 24 hours after it was first spotted, local and federal authorities towed the whale 15 miles away from the coast, where it attracted a 20-foot-long great white shark. By Thursday, the carcass had drifted back to the shallows off the coast—only to be illegally climbed on by local swimmers, who also reportedly removed its teeth. Forty-eight hours later, officials towed the whale out to sea once more.
It, of course, was a far from ideal situation, and one that was compounded by the intransigence in Washington—specifically the removal of funding for the primary federal agency tasked with handling marine mammal crises, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The sperm whale is an endangered species, so removing the carcass required a federal permit. Under a functioning government, that process can happen in a matter of hours. “Normally, NOAA would take the action of getting that carcass as far away from the beaches and people and tourism as possible,” Addie Haughey, associate director of government relations at Ocean Conservancy, a DC-based nonprofit ocean conservation group that works with NOAA, tells Mother Jones. “But they, because of the furloughs, were deterred in being able to do that quickly.” A NOAA spokesperson admitted in an interview with Motherboard that the process was in fact somewhat delayed: “The situation is impacted by the partial government shutdown,” the spokesperson said the day after the carcass was discovered. “NOAA personnel will be limited in number and in the extent of work they are able to do at this time.”"
Jackie Flynn Mogensen reports for Mother Jones January 22, 2019.
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