ROM’s new blue whale long ways from going on display
Posted May 17, 2014 7:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Royal Ontario Museum curator is back from Newfoundland, but the work he started there — breaking down the carcass of a blue whale for research — is just beginning.
Burton Lim was part of a 10-person team that spent six days skinning and dismantling a dead blue whale that washed ashore in Trout River in April.
Now it will take almost two years before the skeleton is ready for research, and he can’t say when, if ever, it will be displayed for the public.
“We’ll probably bury it in a manure compost and let nature break down the remaining flesh,” Lim said.
The giant animal’s skeleton and tissue samples are being trucked to Trenton, Ont. for processing before they come to rest in their permanent home at the ROM.
But museum visitors may have even longer to wait before they can get a glimpse of the skeleton belonging to the largest animal to ever live on Earth.
Lim and his team have not secured funding for public display of this whale, or the many others they already have in their collection.
The whale that Lim’s team dismantled was one of four that washed ashore on the Newfoundland coast in the last few months. They are believed to be part of a group of nine whales killed by pack ice this winter, representing a big blow to the endangered species.
It’s believed they were either crushed or drowned as they tried to surface to breathe.
“Obviously from a conservation point of view that would have a big effect on the northwest Atlantic population,” Lim said, adding only about 250 blue whales swim those waters.
Despite the tragic circumstances, the museum is happy to add a blue whale to its collection, which already includes humpback, sperm, right, killer, fin and minke whales.
The team had plans to collect a second blue whale carcass from Rocky Harbour, Nfld., but the costs of processing the first whale — estimated to be in the tens of thousands of dollars — were higher than expected.
Those extra costs include towing the first carcass from Trout River to adjacent Woody Point where it could more easily be worked on. The second body is still resting in shallow water near the Rocky Harbour fish plant in Gros Morne National Park.
With files from The Canadian Press
