Student Arrested for Trying to Chisel Teeth From Whale

By Kenneth R. Weiss

Los Angeles Times

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Federal agents are investigating reports that a college student tried to illegally hammer off the teeth of a rare sperm whale that washed ashore dead Sunday on a beach in Isla Vista near the University of California at Santa Barbara.

"I arrived, and this guy had a hammer and was hammering away on the teeth," said Shane Anderson, supervisor of marine operations at the UC-Santa Barbara Marine Laboratory. "I explained to him that there was a federal law against doing that and that the specimen was important for science. He didn’t want to hear it."

Santa Barbara sheriff’s officials said the student then became verbally abusive that he was arrested and cited him for public disturbance.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Erik Raney said David Harrison, 20, a UC-Santa Barbara student, was released on the spot after being issued a misdemeanor citation. Harrison could not be reached for comment.

Joseph Cordaro, who coordinates marine mammal strandings for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said it was extraordinarily rare for a sperm whale to wash ashore in California.

The endangered whale typically remains far offshore, he said.

Unlike the large whales that have bristle-like baleens to strain plankton from seawater, sperm whales have large cone-shaped teeth which they use to hunt and eat squid at great depths.

Sperm whale teeth, which can be 8 inches in length and 3 inches in diameter, can fetch hundreds of dollars on the black market as raw teeth or carved or engraved into handiwork called scrimshaw. Federal officials often prosecute such trafficking cases to discourage poaching of these whales .

Sperm whales are protected both by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

"It’s illegal to possess any part of any marine mammal without getting a permit from us," Cordaro said.

Roxanna Behtash, special agent with the National Marine Fisheries Service, confirmed that she has begun an investigation into the college student’s alleged violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

She declined to elaborate on the investigation until the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s general council office determines what specific charge should be pursued and whether it should be handled as a civil or criminal case.

Biologists, meanwhile, were planning a beach necropsy to take tissue and skin samples, in an effort to learn what they can about the cause of death. A team from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History was leading the effort .

Typically, Cordaro said, the team will take a lower jaw and skin samples for DNA analysis.