They both lack the immortality of Moby-Dick but these whales are showing some classic staying power.

On Sunday, staff members from the Mystic Aquarium cut loose the 14-foot pilot whale that washed ashore near Sakonnet Point in Little Compton last week, in the hope the carcass would wash out to sea.

Well, it did.

And then it came right back, like some 1,500-pound bad penny.

The whale experts are now considering towing the carcass off the beach with a fishing boat — if they can find someone willing to back into the rocky area.

The situation was just as smelly and uncertain around the point where on Saturday workers on Briggs Beach spent the day burying the 30-foot-long, 2-ton humpback that also washed ashore last week. But some problems arose there on the wet sand.

With the weekend’s pounding surf, a backhoe operator was able to dig down only about four feet before waves started filling the hole, said beach manager Ron Bogle. Then there was the issue of bloating.

Staff from the aquarium suggested the backhoe operator first use the bucket’s teeth to pop a few holes in the bulging blubber to allow some buoyant gases to escape.

“He banged on that thing with the claw several times but it didn’t make a dent,” Bogle said. “That old saying, ‘As tough as nails’? Well for me it’s now as tough as whale.”

Someone suggested using a chain saw “but no one volunteered to get that close to it,” Bogle said. It smells pretty bad.

The end result come Sunday morning was that with the pounding waves and the ever more buoyant humpback, “the whale is right there on the beach and it looks like we never even dug a hole.”

The plan now, said Bogle, is to wait a couple of days in the hopes that the new-moon tide may lift the whale higher onto the beach. Then once the tide levels recede workers will dig a deeper hole higher up on the sand.

In the meantime, Bogle said he would be speaking with the local police to see if they might shoot some holes in the whale.

Bogle has already ruled out, however, any explosives such as dynamite used once in Oregon to dislodge a similar beached whale.

“They had raining blubber coming down for quarter of a mile,” he said. “One lady’s car hood was flattened.”

tmooney@projo.com