A stray whale died in Osaka Bay, raising questions about the cause and the cost of disposal

TOKYO (AP) — A whale as long as a train car that died after straying into a port in Osaka last month is set to be buried until it naturally becomes a skeletal specimen for a local museum.

It’s the third year in a row that whales have become stranded in the area, raising questions about the reasons why and the cost of handling the incidents.

The animal is believed to be a male sperm whale, about 12 meters (39 feet) long and weighing an estimated 20 tons, and was earlier spotted in the Sakai Semboku Port in mid-January.

It had since been spotted in a number of locations in Osaka Bay, until Sunday, when a boat captain reported to the coast guard that the whale was not breathing. Prefectural officials and experts took a boat out to check on the whale and confirmed its death on Monday, presumably due to starvation.

Osaka officials have decided to bury the dead whale at a section of a nearbyindustrial waste disposal complex after cetacean experts carried out an autopsy, collecting samples to determine the cause of the whale’s death, prefectural environmental department official Toshihiro Yamawaki said.

Television footage showed the dead whale being carefully lifted by a crane and transported to the burial site, where it will stay underground for a few years until it becomes naturally skeletonized. Officials will then dig it up and donate it to the local natural museum.

The cause of the stranding is unknown.

Yamawaki said whales have been sighted on and off not only in Osaka Bay but across Japan, noting experts’ view that whales generally follow the movement of the warm Kuroshio tide. Those that somehow miscalculated the distance and went too close to the coast may become stranded, scientists think.

On average, more than 300