OTTAWA — The largest animal on the planet will be “the wedding cake” of the Canadian Museum of Nature’s new water gallery when the facility fully reopens in May.
That’s the way exhibition designers are describing a 19-metre skeleton of a blue whale. All 130 bones of the skeleton are currently being pieced together, amidst renovations that have been going on for nearly six years.
They’ve even given the whale a name — Talula — and quite a bit is known about her.
She passed away in 1975 and was found on a beach in Codroy, N.L. That’s when her rebirth as a museum piece began.
She was cleaned down to her bones in Newfoundland and put on a rail car bound for Ottawa where she was buried with the baby trees in a nursery. Eight years later, after nature did its work to clean the remaining flesh off her bones, she was dug up and brought into collection storage.
Before bones can be displayed, all the oils have to be drawn out and washed away. To do this, experts used huge 2,000-litre tubs of biodegradable enzymes. It’s only the fourth known time whale bones have been cleaned this way.
The skeleton is almost 100 per cent complete — except for a section of vertebrae damaged or missing — likely caused by the ship strike that is believed to have killed her.
“This is probably one of the most significant and awesome specimens we’ve ever put on display,” said Jonothan Ferrabee, the main water gallery exhibition designer.
When Talula was alive, she would have weighed nearly 90 tonnes. Her bones alone weigh 2.3 tonnes.
But as an adolescent — she was only about six years old — she was still a few metres short of full size.
“These animals are usually very long lived,” said Ferrabee. “If she hadn’t been killed, she might well still be out there swimming the oceans — they can live 80 years.”
The job of assembling the bones, currently underway, is expected to take another week or so. Ferrabee likens it to putting together a jigsaw puzzle — one with no photo on the box.
“The bones tell you where to go,” he said.
The Museum of Nature officially reopens May 22, 35 years after Talula was buried.