Talking to Robert DiGiovanni about being New York’s go-to whale fixer and the surprising number of burials he’s done in the Rockaways.
If a whale washes up on a beach in New York, there is pretty much one guy to call. “Twenty-five years ago, every time a whale stranding occurred, it was like the first time it happened,” says Robert DiGiovanni, a construction-worker-turned-marine-biologist who founded what amounts to a comprehensive whale command system, the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society , in 2016. “It would take multiple days to do a basic response.” Now it doesn’t.
I talked to DiGiovanni about being a dead-whale fixer, how he got into the whale-response business, and, of course, where the whale bodies are buried.So how did you become the go-to whale guy in New York? Sometimes people do some unusual things. They think it’s neat and take samples even though it’s against the law. But the biggest thing that concerns me is if the animal is in the surf rolling around and people get close.Oh no. But in those cases, why don’t you just push the whales back into the ocean rather than haul them out?
Do you have an estimate of how many whales actually end up buried on New York beaches? Because not every beached whale will get buried, right? It’s an interesting way to look at it. Historically animals have been washing up along shores for thousands of years and it’s really the burying part that is something new we do. The unfortunate part for us is when we do this and can usually do it in a couple days, people don’t even know and don’t even realize there’s a group that needs support.
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