Whale remains gone, Sorrento beaches still closed at 10:40 am

10:40 am was the decisive checkpoint at Sorrento Beach: the whale carcass was gone, but the beaches were still closed. The official update on Sunday, October 25, 2026, separated two things that might otherwise look like the same event—a completed removal and permission to return to the water. At this Perth beach, one had not delivered the other. ¹¹

The reason was what could remain after the cleanup. Western Australia’s Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development warned that residue from where the carcass had been beached might attract sharks. Removing the visible material did not, by itself, resolve that concern. ¹¹

Surf lifesavers had reported whale remains just offshore. The City of Joondalup took them away within a few hours, with the operation including the removal of a carcass’s tail, ABC News reported. The remains were then buried at Red Hill Waste Management Facility. The dated ABC report and PerthNow’s account place the discovery and closure on Sunday, October 25. ^{1 3}

That disposal completed the remains’ journey away from the shore. It did not establish that the place they had occupied was ready for swimmers. SharkSmart’s 10:40 am notice confirmed that city officers had advised the carcass was no longer in place, then stated plainly: “Beaches remain closed in the Sorrento Beach area.” ¹¹

The important word in that advice is “may.” The notice described a possible attraction, not a confirmed shark encounter associated with the remains. It did not report a carcass-linked shark sighting, and no attack or injury was reported in connection with this incident. Equally, the absence of a reported sighting is not proof that no shark was present. ^{11 1}

Department staff and personnel from other agencies were monitoring the situation, according to the government’s SharkSmart app as reported by ABC. But the available reports do not establish what that monitoring detected after the removal. Monitoring was an activity under way, not a published finding that either confirmed sharks at the site or cleared the water. ^{1 11}

For beachgoers, the gap in the information was practical. The official notice identified the “Sorrento Beach area” without naming every affected beach or setting northern and southern coastal limits. It supplied neither an exact closure start nor a reopening time, and it specified no fixed waiting period after the carcass was removed. ¹¹

ABC described the Sorrento discovery as the second whale carcass on Perth beaches that week and the third in the past month. That is a measure of the recent frequency reported along the coast—not evidence that the deaths shared a cause or that these remains belonged to a previously discovered animal. No verified species, dimensions or weight have been established for the Sorrento remains in the available account. ¹

A separate carcass found at South City Beach on September 27 was identified as a 13-metre, 72-tonne humpback, which required an excavator to remove. Those striking measurements belong to that earlier whale. They should not be transferred to the tail and other remains removed at Sorrento. ¹

Sorrento also carried the recent memory of a fatal shark attack. About five weeks earlier, Perth father Greg O’Neill was killed by a large great white while swimming close to shore, ABC reported. That history helps explain the local sensitivity to a shark warning; it does not establish a connection between the earlier attack and this carcass. ¹

The immediate decision at Sorrento rested on a narrower precaution: possible shark attraction from residue. The official record provides a firm snapshot, not a continuous account of beach access through the rest of Sunday. At 10:40 am, removal was complete and closure remained in force. A clear shoreline was not an all-clear. ¹¹