'National treasure' blue-whale skeleton to be displayed at UBC
Stinking carcass to be dug up, stripped after being buried 20 years in P.E.I.
Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, March 04, 2008
In what will be one of the rankest exhumations ever, a blue whale buried in Prince Edward Island 20 years ago is about to be dug up and shipped to Vancouver.
After two decades in the ground the giant 25-metre carcass -- blue whales are the biggest mammals on Earth -- is still encased in its thick blue rubbery skin, and infused with rancid oil that makes even seasoned biologists gag.
"I have to say there is probably no worse smell in the world than a dead whale," says marine biologist Andrew Trites at the University of British Columbia, who has bagged the "national treasure" for the UBC's new biodiversity centre.
The whale washed ashore near Tignish, P.E.I., in 1987. The Canadian Museum of Nature, which had hoped to put the skeleton on display, had the animal buried on nearby provincial land.
The federal and provincial governments never did find the space to accommodate the creature, and it was destined to slowly disintegrate in its sandy grave until Trites and his colleagues came calling.
They flew out to size up the creature in December. With the help of a backhoe and volunteers from the P.E.I. veterinary school, they dug down expecting to find nice clean bones.
Trites says it was the "biggest shock" to hit not bones, but the whale's still-rubbery top.
"I stood up on the back of the whale and thought: 'What have I got myself into?' " he says.
Trites and skeleton articulator Michael DeRoos return in May with more heavy machinery. They'll don masks and, starting at one end, will peel way the rotting flesh and extract the interlocked bones. The bones will be loaded into a freezer container for the trip to B.C., where they will be cleaned up and pieced back together.
It is to be
erected next year in the glass atrium of the biodiversity centre's museum, at the middle of the UBC campus, where the whale will be in full view of people passing by.
Trites says the blue whale is a fitting centrepiece since the "gentle giant" is the biggest animal on Earth, yet it is totally dependent on some of the smallest species, the phytoplankton it scoops out of the sea with its giant mouth.
The biologists hope to eventually add several more creatures to the museum's collection. Trites says they already have "options" on a humpback and baby killer whale that were also buried after they died.
Blue whales ply all the world's oceans. Mature adults are as long as two school buses, making them bigger than any of the dinosaurs. Their
hearts are the size of a small car and their arteries wide enough for a human baby to crawl through.
There are about 4,500 blue whales left, down from 350,000 before whaling began, and sightings are rare. "I've never seen one in all the years I've on been on the water," says Trites. But he says five of the endangered creatures were spotted off the B.C. coast last year, raising hope the creatures are coming back.
The blue whale is not only the biggest, but the loudest animal. At 190 decibels, a blue whale's call is louder than a jet (140 decibels), and much louder than a person can shout (70 decibels).