“Need a hand?”
“Yeah, I can’t get my whale started!”
People do a lot of stupid things. Train surfing. Ghost riding their whips. Cross fit. But a man in Western Australia might’ve just taken the cake. Taken the cake and all the ingredients for the next cake, as well.
In the waters in between Rottnest and WA, a dead humpback whale has been floating for some time. Since sharks like dead whales, among other things, they have been spotted eating it, which is good. Otherwise it’d wash ashore, fill up with rotten gasses, and explode, covering onlookers in giant chunks of whale blubber – which is entertaining for onlookers of the onlookers, but not so much for the first onlookers.
According to the West Australian, the Seven News helicopter spotted the man sitting on top of the forty-foot whale carcass, which is an odd place to sit. Surf Life Saving WA had put out a warning earlier that several tiger sharks had been spotted feeding on the whale, so it made it an even odder place to sit. But after someone on a nearby boat told him that yes, there were indeed sharks in the water, he returned to his boat. Reports aren’t clear just how he got back to his boat, but I’m assuming he dove off the rotting whale carcass and swam through a gauntlet of hungry tiger sharks, which is actually pretty awesome.
Obviously, authorities weren’t all that happy with guy. “Ninety-nine per cent of the population would see that behaviour as irresponsible,” said Department of Fisheries regional manager Tony Cappelluti in a statement that 1% of people disagree with. “If sharks were feeding on that whale carcass when he swam over, then that type of behavior is highly risky.”
