Sarasota County Sheriff's Office

The death of a sperm whale off the Venice coast this morning, while difficult even for marine experts who deal with such things, could be a learning experience for them."Every time you see a whale in distress, like we did yesterday, it's, it's always really hard. It's really hard. And so all we can do is utilize the opportunity to learn as much about them as we can," Laura Engleby, chief of NOAA's Marine Mammal branch, said Monday morning standing on the beach near the whale's carcass. "And then that helps us understand some of the things that we can do to ultimately recover and help them. And so, in that way, that's how we have to think about it. "

Venice Police and Sarasota County Sheriff's units on Sunday were assisting Mote Marine Laboratory staff with a beached sperm whale off the coast of Venice. The 70-feet-long whale was beached on a sandbar about 50 yards out from Service Club Park.

Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman doesn’t want the public to know the identity of two deputies involved in the shooting of 65-year-old Jeremiah Evans and has gone to great lengths to keep their names, which are public information under Florida’s Public Records Act, a secret.