Buried Whales, Cont'd

Our recent post about the hazards of whale burial attracted a celebrity commenter: Steve O'Shea of the Auckland University of Technology. Best known for his squid-hunting endeavors, O'Shea is also overseeing the research into the public-health consequences of interring beached whales. He takes us to school thusly:

I can assure you that E. coli is the very least of our concerns; there's some real bad stuff in there.

The reason for burial is not because of maori insistence; burial is commonplace...