#Whale skeleton driver#

Left alone, the oil quickly becomes rancid and unbelievably stinky in saturated whale bones. Did you know that this oil can comprise up to 40-50% of the weight of a blue whale skeleton?! It is less rigid and is filled with oil that serves as a nutrient reserve and aids in buoyancy in living whales. Cancellous bone, on the other hand, is sponge-like. Compact bone is found in the outer regions of bones and in the load-bearing regions of the skeleton. We have since relied on composting, insectsВ and soil microorganisms to remove the remaining soft tissues and weвЂ™re ready to move on to the next stage.Дegreasing вЂ“ Whale bones are composed of both compact and cancellous hard tissues. Members of our community who helped to collect the skeleton flensed away aboutВ 70 tonsВ of flesh to extract the bones. These are theВ steps needed to restore and articulate our Blue Whale:Д¬leaning вЂ“ We have already come a long way in preparing our blue whale skeleton for display (see our story). No state or federal funding could be located for this endeavor, according to Mate.WhatвЂ™s Next for Our Skeleton The art of skeleton articulation The OSU Foundation set up a 'Blue Whale Articulation Fund' for donations. 'You could park a Volkswagen in the shade under the fluke of a blue whale,' he marveled. In an interview Thursday, Mate raised the possibility of raising money by selling naming rights to the monumental display. Then there are the costs of the hazardous chemicals and facility needed to leach the oil from the skeleton before it is assembled.

#Whale skeleton driver#

'We want to get it done before the opening of the building.'ДЄ major cost driver for the project is the expense of retaining a crane and barge for the retrieval of the bone bundles from an undisclosed location in the bay. 'We feel pretty confident we can get the job done in six to nine months,' Mate said.

Mate said he does not want to retrieve the bones from the bottom of the bay until he knows his team has the funds to carry the project all the way through. The opening date is about one-and-a-half years away. That building is currently under construction. Oregon State University has reserved a spot for the whale skeleton in front of its new Marine Studies Building at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. So the call goes out again now with a little more urgency. He got some offers of volunteer help, but not the needed money. Mate first put out a call for $125,000 in donations in late January. 'As near as I can tell, this is the first blue whale on the Oregon Coast since the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the coast and found Native Americans taking flesh off of a blue whale,' Mate said. Mate said the carcass that washed ashore in Oregon in late 2015 was an extremely rare event. One of the complicated remaining steps is to chemically extract the stinky, residual oil in the whale bones.Д«lue whales swim offshore of the Pacific Northwest every summer, but are rarely seen from land.

'Basically, we're ready to bring it up and start putting it together,' said Mate.Д«ut before the team can do that, Mate said they need to secure the funds to prepare and reassemble the skelton. The team bundled the bones in fishing nets and dropped them on the bottom of Yaquina Bay for crabs and other scavengers to pick clean.

He and a team of volunteers salvaged the bones from a nearly 80-foot-long blue whale that washed ashore dead near Gold Beach. 'ItвЂ™s a whale of a problem, but it's a great idea,' said OSU Marine Mammal Institute Director Bruce Mate.