The enduring draw of the whale

It’s now been more than a month since a 47-foot fin whale washed up on the Anchorage coastal flats, near the mouth of Fish Creek.

In those first days after the whale’s Nov. 16 appearance, the atmosphere was festival-like: Hundreds of people walked, skied and biked to the whale. It became one of those Anchorage destinations, like Snowzilla, where traffic gets backed up around the block. Babies were held aloft for photos, posed in the whale’s giant pink mouth. Nearby neighborhoods saw traffic jams. People around town asked, “have you been to the whale?” Staff from the Alaska Native Heritage Center performed a blessing. Schoolchildren tromped out for field trips.

On social media and in conversation, people debated about wildlife and reverence. Everyone seemed to have a different view.

Should the fin whale be treated with the respect of mourning? Did that preclude taking selfies? Posing with family for holiday cards? What about a TikTok? Where was the line, and what did we owe this creature washed up on our shores?

Like the White Raven before it, the whale inspired hoodie designs and a coffee drive-thru special or two. And then things quieted down.

A month later, we still don’t know much about how the whale, a female juvenile, came to rest in the uppermost reaches of Knik Arm, far from the Gulf of Alaska where fin whales are usually found.

Scientists took necropsy samples for a lab analysis in the first hours after the whale was discovered on the night of Nov. 16, said Barbara Mahoney, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s protected resources division. The results from the testing aren’t expected until January, and because the flesh was frozen when sampled it may be hard to get results.

“Some of the tissues have some damage,” Mahoney said. “It’s going to be challenging.”

We also don’t know when it will leave us: Mahoney says the whale came in on a big, roughly 33-foot tide. It would likely take at least as high a tide to shift the whale back out to the channel and off the frozen mudflats. “It could be here until spring,” she said.

People have interacted with the whale, sometimes in ways that may be illegal, Mahoney said. Alaska Native people can legally take baleen and other products for subsistence or art use, but otherwise taking parts from the whale is illegal because it is a federally listed endangered species.

Someone had cut off the whale’s fluke. On one visit, a bouquet of daisies had been placed on the inlet side of the whale. Someone had left a poem, written on pink construction paper and titled “Sea Dancer.”

The conditions have gotten more treacherous. At around 2 p.m. on Dec. 10, the Anchorage Fire Department rescued a person from on top of the whale itself. The person had apparently been visiting the whale and had sought refuge on the creature when the tide came in, pooling around the animal, according to an Anchorage Police Department account of the incident.

In the shortest month of the year, it was always sunset out at the whale.

Nu Xiong, a video creator, told me he had been to the whale several times. He was happy to see people from across the spectrum of Anchorage there — little kids running around, families.

“You don’t see a whale often,” he said. “Once in a while when they wash up, you get a chance.”

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Two pedestrians look at a 47-foot fin whale carcass, which washed ashore in November, near Fish Creek in Anchorage on December 12, 2024. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Over the whole carcass, another, deeper set of questions lingered: Why were we so compelled by this whale? What were we looking for when we went to see it?

I’m one of the people pulled to the whale. I’ve made at least six trips out to the animal over the past month.

For me, the whale is a visceral reminder that Anchorage is a city on the ocean. The Knik Arm — gray, silty, without the saltwater smell, seaweed or tidepools of Resurrection Bay or Prince William Sound — never quite feels like a true ocean to me. We don’t have a small boat harbor, people rarely boat for pleasure because of the dangerously extreme tides. Though we live with beluga whales, salmon and other marine life, the inlet can feel strangely inert.

But the whale was a 47-foot reminder that we live on the doorstep of the wild, hugged by both mountains and ocean.

It’s different every time. I have never once been there alone.

Each visit, there are still people making their way over a moonscape of ice and silt to reach the creature. A couple visiting from Tennessee had been told about the whale from their airplane seatmate. Another man said he just wanted to see something big. I saw a woman carrying a professional-looking camera cry looking at the whale, tears silently sliding down her face.

Last week, I walked out to the whale yet again in the afternoon twilight. This time I checked the tides, thinking about the man rescued from atop the whale.

The whale looked collapsed, gray. Its mouth was no longer pink. A film of snow covered its back. It was surrounded by little silty icebergs. Still, it was otherworldly, a silent emissary from vast depths.

I stood with it for a time and then turned back, toward Anchorage. There was the same familiar downtown skyline, the alpenglow on the mountains, a colorful stack of shipping containers like a child’s blocks at the port. It was the same city I’d lived in for so many years, but it looked new to me. I’d never quite seen it from this point of view.