Sunday evening, August 4th,  at 5pm a whale landed on South Beach, exactly in front of the volleyball net (right fork).  I had been swimming with the Deignans in that exact spot an hour or so earlier.   The state biologist did not make a definitive declaration of what type of whale it was because the head and tail had been eaten by sharks.  The Vineyard Gazette printed that it was likely a fin back whale. 

The whale had been dead for many days.  I would estimate that only 1/4 to 1/5th of the whale body remained.  If you look closely at the photos below, you can see the flipper and to the right of the flipper is the eye (closed), and next to that you can see the jaw bone.  This was one large whale. About 1 mile of South Beach was closed due to the "whale slick" in the water.  Word had it that when the whale beached Sunday evening, there were sharks in the surf, rolling in the sand, eating chunks of the whale.  I, unfortunately, did not see any on Monday. These photos were taken at 3pm on Monday afternoon, August 5th.  The smell was pretty bad, so we were standing up-wind.  It took the crew about 30 minutes to rope the whale and pull it off shore.  They planned on releasing the body about 15 miles off shore.