This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
The blue whale that washed up on a southern Oregon beach in 2015 was in rough shape. Scientists couldn’t determine exactly how long the 200-ton, nearly 70-foot-long male had been dead, but several factors stood out.
The subsequent necropsy – the animal equivalent of a human autopsy – revealed high levels of the biotoxin domoic acid, which may not have been fatal, but still could have diminished the whale’s ability to feed and travel.
Then there was the extensive bruising to the skull, right lower jaw, abdomen and tail areas near the flukes, all suggesting blunt trauma from a collision with a large vessel. Finally, a rash of tooth marks on the whale’s head pointed to post-mortality scavenging from orcas.
And after nearly a week of scientists wading in and out of the surf in November 2015 to record these findings, that might have been the end of the whale’s journey. Just leave it alone and let nature do the rest.
Which is definitely not what happened.
Now, 11 years later the whale’s massive skeleton is held together by a large stainless steel armature in preparation for one final migration back to Oregon.
If all goes as planned, the skeleton — after help from scientists and specialists from around the world — will be fully reassembled in May outside the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, completing a journey from surf to scientific centerpiece.
“It’s been a huge undertaking with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns,” Lisa Ballance, the center’s interim director, told the Lincoln Chronicle. “But we’ve persevered just because of the awesomeness of the blue whale.”
Blue whales are, after all, the largest animals ever to populate the planet. They dwarf the biggest dinosaurs ever unearthed and continue to fascinate the citizens and the scientists drawn to study them.
They can, for instance, live for 90 years, with most of that time spent swimming solo in every ocean except the Arctic. Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant and their hearts are heavy as a full-sized automobile.
A trip to Canada
They are rare enough, however, that researchers in this whale’s case had to turn to dinosaur preservationists in Alberta, Canada to help with the thorough cleansing of its oil-infused bones and reassembled for public display.
Even then, experts at Dinosaur Valley Studios needed to find specialists from the United States, Japan, Iceland, Australia and Belgium to get a bead on exactly how blue whales swim and forage.
All of that mattered, they say, if the final display was to avoid the mistakes of previous blue whale skeletal reconstruction efforts and, instead, present a realistic expression of how the animals actually move.
“As it turned out, there really wasn’t a lot of information out there we could readily draw on,” said Frank Hadfield, Dinosaur Valley Studios’ founder, president and chief executive officer. “This particular animal, for instance, turned out to have a very rare rib condition. We’d never have known that unless we’d reached out to one of the only specialists in the world who is knowledgeable about that condition.”
In a previous interview, Hadfield said he was sorry that the whale’s vestigial hipbones were never recovered. That’s because researchers say those are remnants of what were once hind legs, since all whales, dolphins and porpoises once were land creatures before their ultimate venture to the ocean.
Still, the project has illuminated for Hadfield that scientists may know as much about the internal anatomies of dinosaurs as they do about the same areas of blue whales.
“This whale is going to be unveiling new surprises for years,” he said.
Then there was the matter of extracting as much oil as possible out of the whale’s bones, since leftover deposits serve as breeding grounds for all sort of microbes that blacken even the prettiest of white- and cream-colored bones.
The task proved arduous. It’s all that of oil, of course, that led to blue whales being hunted nearly to extinction. It’s estimated that between1900 and the mid-1960s, some 360,000 blue whales were slaughtered.
The lower jaws of this blue whale contained nearly 100 pounds of oil each, Hadfield said. He went on to note that if the whale had been completely boiled down, a total yield of 80 tons would have been rendered.
“The amount of oil,” he said, “is stunning.”
Bones in the ocean
Before that final step could ever be taken, the whales’ bones needed to be removed from the beach, placed on flat-bed trailers and driven to Newport for initial cleaning.
The bones were placed in large bags crafted from fishing nets, lowered into the waters of Yaquina Bay outside the Hatfield Center in April 2016.
They remained there, tethered to the bottom by steel cables, for more than three years. That gave the briny water, along with crabs and other marine creatures, time to strip the bones of most of any remaining flesh.
Hadfield’s studio in Alberta’s Drumheller Valley won the subsequent reconstruction contract and work has proceeded since.
One final journey
In Newport, Ballance and her colleagues have blocked out the weeks of May 11 and May 18 to mount the skeleton on the armature being constructed in Canada. Coastal weather will ultimately determine which week the work will be completed.
“What we don’t want is to put it up when the winds are screaming and the rain is coming down sideways,” she said. “But assuming we get the weather window we need, the whole thing should come together in a matter of days.”
The final pose will have the whale’s massive skull tilted at about a 10 degree angle, as if it’s readying to roll and dive after the krill they almost exclusively feed on.
“We wanted to shape the pose in a way that would breathe life into the animal and be a dynamic pose allowing people to envision how a blue whale might be moving through the water,” Ballance said.
The project’s final budget has yet to be determined, but it is likely to exceed the initial $450,000 estimate.
“Tariffs,” she added, “have not been helpful.”
A sign accompanying the skeleton will display the names of people and groups that have contributed significant sums to the project. A “sponsor the bone” effort will also enable visitors to chip in to help cover ongoing maintenance costs associated with the need to periodically recoat the bones to keep the weather at bay.
With so much of the work finally completed, Ballance offered one final thought on what the whale still has to contribute to its new-found terrestrial surroundings.
“It still has layers and layers of stories to tell us,” she said. “But I can’t imagine anyone who will leave unmoved and untouched deeply by the sight and experience.”
Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
