Ocean City public works employees struggled over the weekend to remove an 11-ton, 31-foot-long humpback whale carcass that washed up on the beach.

The female whale's carcass first washed up at Fifth Street on Saturday afternoon; riptides pulled it into the current and it came ashore at Third Street. Public Works employee Dick Malone made a lasso from 75 feet of chain and looped it around the tail. With the help of a bulldozer and tractor, workers hauled the carcass down the beach under the Ocean City Pier. The whale was then loaded onto a trailer and hauled , with police escort, to the Public Works complex on 65th Street.

Researchers with the Department of Natural Resources said the whale had a skull fracture.

— Associated Press