WHALE UPDATE: Man alleged to have removed whale's tooth speaks out

The message comes after a picture was circulated on social media of a man allegedly ‘cutting teeth’ from one of the animals.

The person in question has since contacted this newspaper to say he did not remove anything.

Since the circulation of the picture, force lead for rural crime Chief Inspector Jim Tyner said: “It is not surprising that the sad deaths of these animals has generated considerable fascination and large numbers of people have been coming to Skegness to look at them. However, people need to be aware that touching the creatures is a risk to health and taking ‘trophies’ is against the law. Anyone removing teeth or other parts of the whales may be committing a serious offence, the penalty for which can be quite significant.”

Police said they were aware of the photographs. They said these will form part of their ongoing enquiry into the matter but we would ask anyone with further information to contact them on 101 - reference 368 of January 23.

Shock was also expressed on social media after graffiti appeared on the whales, believed to be a reference to the 2011 nuclear power station disaster in Japan.

The man who said he was responsible for writing ‘Fukishima RIP - man killed me’ wanted to ‘get people talking’.

He said: “I find it disrespectful people were taking selfies with them. I touched them with compassion and heartfelt sadness.”

A police spokesman said: “It’s a terrible thing for someone to do, but there wouldn’t be an actual criminal offence.

“Graffiti is normally criminal damage but the whales don’t belong to anyone so unless the graffiti was very offensive and constituted a public order offence, there would be no offences.”