The term exploding whale primarily refers to an event at Florence, Oregon in November 1970, when a dead sperm whale (reported to be a gray whale) was blown up by the Oregon Highway Division in an attempt to dispose of its rotting carcass.
The engineer in charge of the operation told an interviewer that he wasn't sure how much dynamite would be needed, explaining that he was chosen to remove the whale because his supervisor had gone hunting. A charge of half a ton of dynamite was selected. A military veteran with explosives training who happened to be in the area warned that the planned twenty cases of dynamite was far too much – 20 sticks would have sufficed – but his advice went unheeded. The explosion threw whale flesh over 800 feet (240 m) away.
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