It is a job no man would envy.
An unlucky biologist has been filmed trying to cut open a whale carcass - which exploded all over him.
The sperm whale was one of two which died this week after being beached in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic.
The creatures died after becoming trapped in a narrow channel, and residents of the 50,000-strong Danish community wanted to use the skeleton of one for a museum.
So it fell to unlucky Bjarni Mikkelse, a marine biologist at the National Museum of the Faroe Islands, to cut open the carcass yesterday.
He had never cut open a whale before so he approached the pungent 45ft corpse gingerly.
As soon as he began working, the gas trapped inside exploded, spewing tons of organs and guts into the air.
The main part of the huge blast just missed him.
He told MailOnline: 'The animal was more than two days old when we took it so we knew there would be some pressure on the inside, but nothing like what happened.
'We couldn't imagine it would happen like that so it was a little bit more of a surprise.
'It wasn't a shock. We had expected something. In the situation I was more worried about something worse happening or anyone getting hurt.
'We were cutting along the dorsal part of the animal so when it exploded it did so in a very controlled way.
'It was very loud, I suppose. It's something everyone here is talking about.'
Footage of the incident, which happened at 2pm yesterday, has already been seen on YouTube more than 300,000 times.
The islands are 200 miles north of Scotland but have been under Denmark for 200 years, after previously being ruled by Norway.
People on the Faroe Islands have been hunting pilot whales for centuries, but the practice has been condemned as cruel and unnecessary by animal rights groups.
Despite the gory incident, the locals are still determined to put the skeleton in their museum as a reminder of their culture, and they are already busy cutting up the remains of the carcass.
The whale's flesh will be thrown away.
An unlucky biologist has been filmed trying to cut open a whale carcass - which exploded all over him.
The sperm whale was one of two which died this week after being beached in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic.
The creatures died after becoming trapped in a narrow channel, and residents of the 50,000-strong Danish community wanted to use the skeleton of one for a museum.
So it fell to unlucky Bjarni Mikkelse, a marine biologist at the National Museum of the Faroe Islands, to cut open the carcass yesterday.
He had never cut open a whale before so he approached the pungent 45ft corpse gingerly.
As soon as he began working, the gas trapped inside exploded, spewing tons of organs and guts into the air.
The main part of the huge blast just missed him.
He told MailOnline: 'The animal was more than two days old when we took it so we knew there would be some pressure on the inside, but nothing like what happened.
'We couldn't imagine it would happen like that so it was a little bit more of a surprise.
'It wasn't a shock. We had expected something. In the situation I was more worried about something worse happening or anyone getting hurt.
'We were cutting along the dorsal part of the animal so when it exploded it did so in a very controlled way.
'It was very loud, I suppose. It's something everyone here is talking about.'
Footage of the incident, which happened at 2pm yesterday, has already been seen on YouTube more than 300,000 times.
The islands are 200 miles north of Scotland but have been under Denmark for 200 years, after previously being ruled by Norway.
People on the Faroe Islands have been hunting pilot whales for centuries, but the practice has been condemned as cruel and unnecessary by animal rights groups.
Despite the gory incident, the locals are still determined to put the skeleton in their museum as a reminder of their culture, and they are already busy cutting up the remains of the carcass.
The whale's flesh will be thrown away.
Source : DailyMail
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