From Boston.com pg 1. Sat. 5/17/08 
"Rare whale skeleton to go on
display" by Colin Nickerson. (Please, someone post the link.
)
Nail Pond, Prince Edward Island. "In Canada's province, scientists are unearthing what may be history's largest exhumation of a single creature.
It's a whale of a tale, and a ripe one, too. The reek from the exhumation of a blue whale is strong enough to churn the stomach and bring tears streaming.
It's been nearly 21 years since the immense creature washed ashore, and was buried on an isolated strand of red sand near the Island's northwest tip.
(not far from the village where "oak's" great grandmother was born and raised, of fisher folk, her husband a local hero, who lost his life trying
to save ship-wrecked sailors, in an 1800's December NorEaster)
"We're uncovering a beast bigger than a dinosuar." said Andrew Trites, biologist and leader of the effort to recover the full skeleton of the nearly forgotten cetacean, and re-assemble it at a new museum at the
University of British Columbia on the country's opposite shore. "It's the length of 2 city buses. It held a heart the size of a Volkswagen and a
tongue about the size of an elephant." he said. In late 2009, if all goes well, the skeleton will be suspended in a glass atrium at the Beaty
Biodiversity
Museum in Vancouver. It will be one of a handful of exmples of complete blue whale skeletons, anywhere. Blue whales are the biggest animals on earth and among the rarest, with only a few thousand swimming the oceans. The body snatchers had hoped for a cleaner corpse, expecting to find bare bones. Instead the team found that the whale's namesake blue flesh had basically mummified, while bands of solidified blubber remain on the skeleton, like a hard rubber shroud.
"But it's the smell of the rancid oil permeating the
bones, that really gets your attention." said Trites, in a Thursday interview. at the wind blasted dig site. "It's pretty powerful."
The bizarre unburial uses the techniques of heavy earth moving, and intricate autopsy." In a month or so after a transcontinental truck and train journey, the bones will be dumped into gigantic enzyme bath vats, built specially for the purpose in British Columbia, where bacteria will be employed to rid the bones of the noxious oil. "Eventually, we expect to re-assemble the beautiful skeleton that will allow people to ponder and admire the most marvelous animal," said Michael deRosa, a specialist in piecing together the bones of sea creatures, who has worked on killer whales, and Stellar sea lions, but never a collossus like this.
Meanwhile the 40 or so biologists, veterinary biologists, skeleton articulators, equipment operators, and others at the exhumation site, smear their nostrils with Vick's VapoRub
against the stench and don rubber galoshes to forge through the slurry, of whale oil and muck.
Their widening trench contains a skeleton about 82', roughly as tall as an 8-story building. Several more interesting paragraghs....describing removal of
rotting flesh from the tiny bones at the tips of the flippers up to the monstrous skull. "We estimate the bones, cleaned of soft tissue, will weigh 12
tons or so," DeRoos said. 40% of that is rancid oil, indicating the need to rid the museum site of it,"if we want people to come within a mile of it
" Next week the team expects the whale to be fully exhumed, with
its skeleton separated into individual bones, and loaded, gingerly into a truck, bound for Moncton, New Brunswick, the nearest railhead. BRAVO TO ALL
INVOLVED.
"Rare whale skeleton to go on
display" by Colin Nickerson. (Please, someone post the link.)
Nail Pond, Prince Edward Island. "In Canada's province, scientists are unearthing what may be history's largest exhumation of a single creature.
It's a whale of a tale, and a ripe one, too. The reek from the exhumation of a blue whale is strong enough to churn the stomach and bring tears streaming.
It's been nearly 21 years since the immense creature washed ashore, and was buried on an isolated strand of red sand near the Island's northwest tip.
(not far from the village where "oak's" great grandmother was born and raised, of fisher folk, her husband a local hero, who lost his life trying
to save ship-wrecked sailors, in an 1800's December NorEaster)
"We're uncovering a beast bigger than a dinosuar." said Andrew Trites, biologist and leader of the effort to recover the full skeleton
of the nearly forgotten cetacean, and re-assemble it at a new museum at the
University of British Columbia on the country's opposite shore. "It's the length of 2 city buses. It held a heart the size of a Volkswagen and a
tongue about the size of an elephant." he said. In late 2009, if all goes well, the skeleton will be suspended in a glass atrium at the Beaty
Biodiversity
Museum in Vancouver. It will be one of a handful of exmples of complete blue whale skeletons, anywhere. Blue whales are the biggest animals on earth and among the rarest, with only a few thousand swimming the oceans. The body snatchers had hoped for a cleaner corpse, expecting to find bare bones. Instead the team found that the whale's namesake blue flesh had basically mummified, while bands of solidified blubber remain on the skeleton, like a hard rubber shroud.
"But it's the smell of the rancid oil permeating the
bones, that really gets your attention." said Trites, in a Thursday interview. at the wind blasted dig site. "It's pretty powerful."
The bizarre unburial uses the techniques of heavy earth moving, and intricate autopsy." In a month or so after a transcontinental truck and train journey, the bones will be dumped into gigantic enzyme bath vats, built specially for the purpose in British Columbia, where bacteria will be employed to rid the bones of the noxious oil. "Eventually, we expect to re-assemble the beautiful skeleton that will allow people to ponder and admire the most marvelous animal," said Michael deRosa, a specialist in piecing together the bones of sea creatures, who has worked on killer whales, and Stellar sea lions, but never a collossus like this.
Meanwhile the 40 or so biologists, veterinary biologists, skeleton articulators, equipment operators, and others at the exhumation site, smear their nostrils with Vick's VapoRub
against the stench and don rubber galoshes to forge through the slurry, of whale oil and muck.
Their widening trench contains a skeleton about 82', roughly as tall as an 8-story building. Several more interesting paragraghs....describing removal of
rotting flesh from the tiny bones at the tips of the flippers up to the monstrous skull. "We estimate the bones, cleaned of soft tissue, will weigh 12
tons or so," DeRoos said. 40% of that is rancid oil, indicating the need to rid the museum site of it,"if we want people to come within a mile of it
" Next week the team expects the whale to be fully exhumed, with
its skeleton separated into individual bones, and loaded, gingerly into a truck, bound for Moncton, New Brunswick, the nearest railhead. BRAVO TO ALL
INVOLVED.
