Losing whale remains to B.C. should spur on action for provincial museum: Scott

Dr. Andrew Trites, team leader for the blue whale project in Norway, rests his foot on the whale’s skull. The opening near his foot is the whale’s brain cavity. Transcontinental Media photo by Eric McCarthy

DAVE STEWART
as published in The Guardian May 23, 2008

The former executive director of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation is hoping the province will soon find a home for prized collections such as the 26-metre blue whale currently being exhumed in western P.E.I.

Ian Scott said he is saddened to see that, once again, the Island is silently surrendering a piece of its heritage.

The blue whale, which washed ashore 20 years ago, will be shipped to a museum in British Columbia.

Scott said the attention being given to this whale might be just what is needed to jump-start talks of a provincial museum, one that could house such a display.

Four years before this whale was buried, the P.E.I. legislature passed the Museum Act giving a mandate in natural history to the Island’s provincial museum, known as the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation.

“Fulfilling the mandate, definitely that’s a concern at this stage,’’ Scott said. “Twenty-five years later that mandate is still not being fulfilled. They still haven’t hired a curator.’’

When it comes to provincial museums, the province offers Beaconsfield, Eptek, Miscouche, Green Park, Orwell Corner, Basin Head and Elmira Railroad Museum.

“We have created the wheel but we have not strengthened the hub. The whole artifactory issue was central last year. Sure we had the art in place for over 35 years and it has served a function for temporary storage but it’s very inadequate.’’

Scott believes losing something as precious as a monstrous 26-metre whale might draw attention to the need for a major museum.

“You start to realize we do have something the world is interested in,’’ he said.

David Keenlyside, the current executive director of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation, is out of province this week and was unavailable for comment.

If the province ever did find the space, there is certainly no shortage of whale carcasses to choose from across the province.

Don McAlpine, curator of zoology at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, said numerous whales are buried in P.E.I.

“There are other whales buried over there, no blue whales that I’m aware of but I know there are a number of sperm whales and there are some, actually, at the same site,’’ McAlpine said, referring to the western P.E.I. site where the blue whale is being exhumed.

Rosemary Curley, with the P.E.I. Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, confirmed a number of burial sites exist.

Nail Pond, near the western tip of P.E.I., has a plethora of buried whales.

One of them is a fin whale, measuring 62 feet in length, which was buried on Sept. 16, 1994. It weighed 52,000 pounds.

Curley said there are also a couple of humpback whales buried at Lakeside (near St. Peters). In fact, these burials were preceded by a burial service prior to interment. She said other burial sites include Tignish, South Lake, Basin Head and Wood Islands.

“Quite a few of them have been stranded over the years,’’ Curley said.

She said it’s interesting to note that whales are the property of the federal government when they’re alive but belong to P.E.I. once they’re dead.

Whale of a gift from the people of P.E.I.

ERIK KLASSEN
Commentary as published in The Guardian - May 23, 2008

It was certainly surprising to read Mike Currie’s comments as quoted in the article ‘Dead blue whale a ‘national treasure’ (The Guardian, May 17, 2008), particularly when, at the time he was first told of the upcoming project over a month ago, he expressed little concern and his present concerns would seem to be the result of realizing the amount of media coverage the project was receiving.

Regrettably his view is based on few facts and even less prescience. In 1987, when the whale washed ashore, its burial was paid for by the national Museum of Nature in Ottawa on the condition that it would be able to reclaim the skeleton at some future time. Had this not happened the whale would almost certainly have been cut into pieces and disposed of at sea.

Subsequently the Museum of Nature concluded that its current premises weren’t large enough to contain the skeleton and an agreement was reached with the Museum of Nature and the province of Prince Edward Island for the skeleton to be displayed in a $3-million atrium at the $50-million Beaty Biodiversity Museum and Research Centre, currently under construction at the University of British Columbia.

The skeleton of the blue whale will be prominently attributed as being a gift of the people of P.E.I. where it will be seen by thousands of people and will generate continuing and invaluable publicity for the Island. Also overlooked by Mr. Currie is that one of the major activities of the Beaty Biodiversity Research Centre is marine conservation, the importance of which to coastal provinces such as P.E.I. can hardly be overemphasized.

Since the considerable skills needed to repair the broken bones, replicate any missing parts and articulate the skeleton exist at the University of British Columbia but in relatively few other places in Canada, Mr. Currie’s suggestion that the skeleton be kept here is disingenuous as he does not address who would pay the minimum $1-million cost to prepare and display the skeleton even if it was exhibited in a concrete block warehouse or storage building.

For Mr. Currie, rather than focus on the significant benefits that will accrue to P.E.I. from the project, to suggest that the skeleton should be used as a minor local tourist attraction seems somewhat shortsighted under the circumstances. Fortunately the writer has yet to run into anyone who shares Mr. Currie’s rather parochial view.

Erik Klassen of Charlottetown is a volunteer for infrastructure and fundraising for the University of British Columbia’s Beaty Biodiversity Research Centre.

Exporting our heritage

LETTER OF THE DAY as published by The Guardian - May 20, 2008

Editor:

As we watch the drama unfold near Tignish to transport the bones of a blue whale to become the centrepiece of the University of British Columbia's new Beaty Biodiversity Museum and Research Centre, we learn of what an amazing creature is leaving this Island.

While this example of the largest animal that have ever lived on Earth, is being prepared for its trip west, I am saddened that once again we are silently surrendering a piece of our precious heritage to those who appreciate the educational value of this spectacular creature.

Four years before this whale was buried, the P.E.I. legislature passed the Museum Act giving a clear mandate in natural history to our provincial museum, known as the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation. Sadly, this natural history mandate has seen as much daylight as our unfortunate friend, the blue whale, over the last two decades.

One would hope that the current government, which was elected with a clear commitment to provincial museum development, will soon be articulating a vision on how this mandate will unfold. The Island Heritage Study conducted by The IRIS Group for government will soon be released and we can only hope that this study will also help in setting a future direction.

It was the Daily Examiner of Feb. 28, 1883, that reported on the ancient reptile fossil discovered by Benjamin McLeod while digging a well in New London. Identified by Francis Bain as Bathygnathus borealis, the rare fossil was sent to the Museum of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, which like UBC today, cared enough to ensure the precious item would help educate both the public and researchers.

Hopefully the endless donation of prize parts of our heritage to collections elsewhere will cease as the full mandate of our provincial museum becomes a reality and and not a just a hopeful wish of our legislature.

Ian Scott,

former executive director of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundatio

Piecing blue whale skeleton back together will take some time

ERIC MCCARTHY
Transcontinental Media

as published by The Guardian, May 16, 2008

NORWAY — Not even a coating of Vicks or Tiger Balm in the nostrils will prepare diggers for the stench of a rotting blue whale.

“When the smell gets too bad, you’ll have to get out and go upwind from it for a while,” says skeleton articulator Mike deRoos.

DeRoos is in Norway, near Tignish, helping prepare for the recovery of bones from the skeleton of a blue whale, which has been buried there for nearly 21 years.

Once all the bones have been washed, packaged and shipped to British Columbia, it will be deRoos’ job to piece them back together so the skeleton can be put on display in the atrium of the University of British Columbia’s new Beaty Biodiversity Museum and Research Centre. DeRoos is confident the skeleton will be a great teaching tool for UBC and a great draw to the museum.
He said the university is taking possession just in time, suggesting the whale would be unsalvageable if left in the ground much longer.

There will be broken bones in the carcass, deRoos said. Some would have broken when the whale washed ashore. Moving it to its burial spot would have damaged some bones, too, and the animal’s crushing weight would have caused damage.

“The skeleton is designed to swim in the ocean,” he explained, not to support its weight on land.
DeRoos is part of UBC’s 10-member team that will co-ordinate the recovery of the bones in a project that’s expected to wrap up by next Friday. It will take some time until the bones are put back together and are on display.

“If we’re really lucky, probably a year and a half.”

Before deRoos starts piecing the bones together, he’ll have to soak each individual piece in enzymes to extract the whale grease, and then bleach the bones in sunlight.

Also on site is Mark Halpan, an artist and contractor. It will be his job to repair broken bones and replace missing pieces with Plaster of Paris or hydrastone.

Mammoth whale being dug up at Nail Pond

photo taken Nov 1998

As published by The Guardian - May 15, 2008

NIGEL ARMSTRONG
The Guardian

A whale of a story is unfolding in West Prince as the world’s largest creature gets uncovered at Nail Pond and prepared for transport from one coast of Canada to the other.

Big is the least of the superlatives applicable to the project being called the big dig by some.

A blue whale washed ashore northwest of Tignish in November 1987 and was buried in the sand nearby. Now the University of British Columbia wants to display the skeleton at a new museum on its campus.

Canada does not have a blue whale skeleton on display and there are only 17 of them around the world, four in the United States.

A team from UBC led by Andrew Trites is at Nail Pond this week to carry the Canadian project forward. Helping them are some 30 volunteer staff and students from the University of Prince Edward Island plus volunteer students from Holland College.

Digging with an excavator starts today and there will be much holding of breath, both figurative and literal.

When Trites did an exploratory dig this past December he found the body surprisingly preserved, almost mummified, with skin still wrapped around blubber on the monster animal. That was for the part above the water table.

Trites is not certain what the condition of the remains will be like below the water level at the site located in the sand not far from the water’s edge.

“We still have a bit of anxiety,” Trites said during a public presentation on the project Wednesday in Charlottetown.

Not even the biggest dinosaur could equal the blue whale for length and weight. The whale’s tongue weighs as much as an elephant. It heart is as big as a car and a baby could crawl through parts of its arteries.

Trites had list after list of extraordinary dimensions and degrees associated with the endangered blue whale. It dives some 200 to 300 metres below the sea to feed by plunging its gaping mouth towards swarms of tiny krill.

It stays below for some five to 15 minutes, holding its breath and when it comes to the surface, an awestruck “thar’ she blows” would hardly do the event justice.

Out of two nostrils, also big enough for that baby to crawl through, a jet of oily-stench air is thrust some three stories high as the animal recovers and cleanses its blood, anxious to get down below in the relentless pursuit of its 10,000 pounds of food per day.

“Not only does (that air) smell really bad, but it’s oily as well so droplets stick to you,” said Trites. “They have really bad breath.”

The oil and smell is going to be a big challenge for the team on P.E.I.

“This past December when I was here I was touching the bones with my hands and I forgot and held up my camera up to get a picture,” said Trites. “My camera still smells . . . but in a good way.”

The public is welcome to come watch the Nail Pond excavation, which should see the whole carcass uncovered by Saturday, but Trites warns onlookers to be careful.

“You don’t want to get into that goo,” he said of the decomposing liquefied blubber, water and sand at the pit.

Trites said the team’s clothing will be destroyed at the end of the dig.
He expects the uncovering will take about two days, followed by three days to cut up and record the remains.

“The whole crew will be slicing and dicing by Saturday,” predicts Trites.

The team even includes three people whose sole job is sharpening knives. Then there is the tagger with some 1,000 tags for identification, the photographer for every big or tiny piece and the film crew from Discovery Channel that is following the whole project through.

The team brought a mammoth chain saw from B.C. to help slice the skull in half.

That is required to get inside to clean it out and support it for transport, said Trites.
Once dug up, cut up and recorded, the whale parts will be packed into a container and transported across Canada by rail, free of charge courtesy of CN Rail, said Trites.

To follow the progress of that journey, just follow the seagulls, he quipped.

His team also received free transport courtesy of WestJet which donated airfare to the project.
Also making a donation was a real estate development company in B.C. which donated space in Victoria where the bones will be arranged, repaired and assembled in what Trites called “major reconstruction.”

That is, after the bones have been de-greased.

“That will be our next big challenge,” said Trites.

The team explored an offer from a helicopter cleaning company but its tubs of degreaser were not big enough, it turned out. Now the team is going to try a fairly new technique of immersing the bones in vats contained an enzyme that purports to digest oil.

The goal is to suspend and display the skeleton by the fall of 2009 in an all-glass atrium above the stairs leading down to the underground Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC. The Beaty will house some 2 million specimens now in the care of UBC but spread around the campus in storage.