No plan to remove carcass of beached Nova Scotia whale that travelled up a river [Video]

It was low tide as Morgan MacDonald splashed a bucket of seawater over the humpback whale in the middle of Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie River on Canada Day. The whale’s grapefruit-sized eyes tracked the handful of people desperately trying to keep him cool, plastering his black barnacled body with wet blankets. Periodically, he opened his long mouth and blew a prehistoric-sounding trumpet of air.

Soon the tide, a wall of fast-moving water that surges up from the Bay of Fundy twice daily, enveloped the dark creature. The whale swam into the rising muddy waters, its human saviours left hoping it would find its way way out.

Sadly, the next day, the school-bus-sized humpback turned up dead on the muddy banks of the river. Since then, its carcass has been pushed and pulled through the local rivers that carve into the countryside, an eye-popping scene for motorists travelling on a busy highway …