Country diary: A giant of the sea, reduced to a fragment | Sara Hudston

Porlock Weir, Somerset: This fin whale died in the Bristol Channel back in October; its sutured skull is all that remainsAt Porlock Weir to see the gigantic spring tide, I did not expect to find the skull of a fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus). Sea-bleached and battered, it lay next to a pile of logs a little above the high?water mark.At first, I thought it was merely a lump of old plastic, perhaps a polythene barrel twisted out of shape by winter storms. It had something of the yellowy?whiteness and sculptural, moulded contours of injected polystyrene. Continue reading...