"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it an explosion, but it can be like an enormous fart," said Tore Haug of the Norwegian Marine Research Institute in Bergen.
He warned emergency crews trying to tow the cadaver out of the fjord that gases built up in the dead whale's stomach could cause a blowout.
"It would be quite unpleasant if the stomach blows up," Haug told web site bt.no. "It's not very nice to have rotten whale parts showering over you."
No one knows where the whale came from, or how long it has been dead. The 10-meter-long creature weighing several tons is believed to have drifted into the fjord between Bergen and Sotra.
"There's a stink over the entire area from the whale that's floating around 800 meters off Korsneset," Per Stiegler, operations leader of the Hordaland Police District, told new bureau NTB. "We don't want to risk having it wash ashore under any circumstances."
Frode Vindenes, a volunteer with the Bergen Sea Rescue Corps, was among those trying to keep it away from land. "The whale is completely white and it smells intensely," he told Aftenposten.no. "It's almost deteriorated. There are seagulls all over it."
The police, Coast Guard, Bergen officials and marine researchers tried to sink the whale and managed to do so early Thursday, in the Korsfjord at a depth of 600 meters off Skorpo.
