The looky-loos are gone, and so is a dead 40-foot gray whale that captured the public’s attention for five days after washing ashore Sunday afternoon at Lower Trestles, one of America’s premier surf breaks.

A contractor working for California state parks on Friday removed the final remnants of the 60,000-pound whale, which had been dissected by an excavator a day earlier on the beach a mile south of San Clemente. The contractor was performing cleanup Friday morning.

Only four surfers were in the water early Friday and, unlike Thursday when the estimated $30,000 removal operation began, there were no spectators lining up to watch the operation from a distance, outside a perimeter set up by state lifeguards.

The whale’s remains and the cleanup debris will find a new home at a San Diego County landfill.

Rich Haydon, area state parks superintendent, said the contractor used plastic sheeting and straw swales to contain any liquids from the whale during dissection and uplift into dump trucks.

“We were really surprised that there wasn’t more seepage coming off of the whale,” Haydon said. “When we were all there the day before on a site visit, a marine biologist taking blubber samples pierced the skin and it started to off-gas. We think they actually did us a favor by releasing some of that pressure in the whale, because it never popped – it never blew out all the decomposing contents.

“As they started to dismember the carcass, they said it was messy but it wasn’t as messy as it could have been,” Haydon said.

Workers tarped all the way around the whale carcass, he said, “kind of like a surgeon does in a surgical field. Then they set up the straw swales around it for containment. We haven’t seen anything seeping down to the ocean.”

Haydon said final cleanup would include skimming the top layer of sand off the beach where the whale had been, along with any earth that may have been contaminated by whale blood or drippings.

“It’s to be expected there will be a little bit of a smell down there for awhile,” he said, “but I think we dodged a bullet.”

Two surfing friends, Nick Lind of Newport Beach and Matthew Howell of San Clemente, experienced the odor Friday morning while surfing the point at Lower Trestles during removal of the last pieces of whale.

“It did have an interesting stench to it,” Lind said, “sort of like a rotten baked potato. It was overpowering when we were near shore.”

Lind, 30, and Howell, 22, said they arrived at 6 a.m., having decided to enjoy a rare chance to have Lower Trestles nearly all to themselves.

“Lowers is typically a very crowded spot,” Lind said, “and because the whale is here it has been empty. So it was a wonderful opportunity to get out here early and surf a couple of empty waves.”

Lind said he wasn’t worried about whale remnants attracting sharks, as he noticed dolphins offshore while walking up to the surf break and figured sharks would stay away.

Howell said he kept an eye out for dorsal fins but wasn’t worried. “I was thinking about it, absolutely,” he said. Several days ago, surfing on the south side of San Clemente Pier, he said a chunk of what may have been a second dead whale reported off the coast floated by.

“Everyone is looking, ‘What is that thing?’” Howell said.

San Clemente city lifeguards said a beach maintenance crew buried whale remains that washed up on the south side of the pier Sunday, followed by a second section of whale remains that washed up a half-hour later on the north side of the pier.

“We haven’t seen anything since,” Marine Safety Officer Blake Anderson said Friday.

Meanwhile at Lower Trestles, Nobu Yoshida, 52, from Nagoya, Japan, suited up in his wetsuit Friday morning to enter the uncrowded surf during whale cleanup, not concerned about sharks. “I came from Japan yesterday,” he said, adding that he has much experience surfing the point.

“Many times at Trestles,” he said. Sharks? “I don’t think so.”

Contact the writer: fswegles@ocregister.com or 949-492-5127