So I’m at my desk when my cell rings – its Anton (you know – our Collection Manager Marine Mammals)…
“Do you wanna see a dead whale?”
Of course! So off I trot (nice and quicksmart in time with whatever’s playing on my MP3) – not even worrying about what the Wellington wind was doing to my hair… you can’t turn your nose up to this kind of opportunity!
Anton pointing down to the washed up dead whale.
And there it was – I wasn’t too sure what I was expecting but this poor creature had been dead at least a couple of days, so it wasn’t in the best shape. It had been battered around by waves, dashed against rocks, pecked and chewed by various creatures.
My first view of the dead Pygmy Sperm whale
DoC had been contacted – their plan was to tow it back out to open sea – a floating restaurant for lots of happy sea creatures.
Two things I have learnt about a Pygmy sperm whale – notice three-quarters of the way towards its tail there’s discolouring in the water – I thought it was blood… its ink! We think they squirt ink out much like a squid does to confuse and escape from predators.
The other thing (although it has decomposed so much you couldn’t see it) is that these whales have markings just behind their heads that imitate gills. So, from a distance they could be mistaken for great white sharks.
The sneaky camouflage whale!
Measurements were taken (have just been told it was 3.2 metres long) and samples collected which will help us figure out its age and genetic make-up.
Measuring
By this time critical mass of onlookers had been achieved so passers by were now stopping to see what the go was. Of course nobody had been interested when it was just Anton and myself 
All those people walked on by who missed this opportunity… hence the blog! Too exciting and interesting not to share!
On Sunday evening 11 May 2008 Te Papa closed Whales|Tohorā. Over 140,000 people had visited the exhibition.
During the morning several killer whales, or orca, played by the fountain in Oriental Bay – much to the delight and amazement of several of the Whales exhibition team members. We like to think it was a sign!
For Te Papa staff and iwi partners who had contributed to the exhibition the closing was a sad and moving event. We gave the exhibition a poroporoaki (farewell) and blessed the taonga in preparation for the tour to the first international venue in Washington DC.
We reflected on what had been achieved and the impact we believe the exhibition has had on so many people. The exhibition’s whakatauki, or proverb, sums it up:
Tere tohorā, tere tangata.
Where whales journey, people follow.
This week Te Papa staff start taking down the exhibition and getting it packed up and ready to travel to the United States. It will open later this year at the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C.
The whale has now been completed dissected and the organs such as intestine, kidneys and heart, are being preserved in a formalin solution. the bones are being flensed (stripped of muscle). The stomach content revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Dr Joy Reidenberg is now in the process of investigating respiratory tract. Above you can see the lungs and Dr Reidenberg is holding up the laryngeal sac which is different to other animals in that it sits off to the side instead in the middle.
This morning the internal organs were individually explored. The blood vessels near the heart showed that this whale successfully changed from an intra uterine to extra uterine life (technically, the ductus arteriosus was closed).
The ductus arteriosus is a blood vessel that circulates oxygenated blood received from the mother whale while the baby whale is in the uterus. When the baby whale is born, the lungs take over this function and the ductus arteriosus gradually closes and becomes a part of the ligature.
This morning the internal organs will be removed and preserved in jars for later study.
I am assured that this will reduce the smell – I have a pretty good stomach for this kind of thing but whale guts smell bad!
You can see part of the jaw being removed in the above picture and below is the view looking from the body up to the head.
The large white mass in the near the top of the skull is tympanic bulla (the ear bone).
You can see the heart in the lower right hand side corner with arteries coming out of it – they look like collapsed sausages.
Above is a picture of the Pygmy right whale lung, it’s about 45cm long when stretched out like it is below. The lungs sit under the backbone of the whale and isn’t divided into lobes like human lungs are.
The scientists told me that they think it’s smaller than usual in a whale of this size.
The heart is in perfect shape – it actually looked like a Valentine’s heart especially when it was lifted out – see below.
The scientists have removed the rib bones from one half of the whale. It’s getting a little bit smelly!
When the scientists lifted the intestine out, I could see it was attached by a thin but very tough membrane and in the membrane were…
Not chicken pox! Those darker lumps are lymph nodes!
Lymph channels are important as part of the immune system and filter the fluid to the heart that is not returned by veins. Lymph nodes in the gut, like above, carry the fat that has been absorbed by the gut and ensure that foriegn bodies like bacteria are eliminated before reaching the heart
Above you see the tongue of the baby pygmy right whale. Whales lips aren’t flexible enough to form a suction around the mother’s nipple like human babies do.
To latch on to the mother’s nipple, a baby whale curls its tongue. A good suction is assisted by the flaps on either side of the tongue – you can see one of them above. As the baby whale gets older and is no longer suckling, the flaps will mostly disappear. Cool, huh?
Drs Reidenberg and Fordyce are now actively uncovering the deeper tissues of the throat. This specimen is in an excellent state of preservation, so that delicate tissues like nerves are easy to identify.
The scientists are removing the muscle layer to reveal the pygmy right whale’s unusual bone structure.
This is Dr Sentiel Rommel’s thoughts on the rib structure:
You can see the ribs gradually changing to the unique flattened and overlapping ribs on the right. the space between the ribs allows them to move as the whale breathes and also accomodates changes in volume that occurs as the air is compressed by water pressure when the whale dives through deep water.
The flattened ribs don’t have as much space between them and overlap. The study of terrestial animals that have wide, flattened ribs (the pangolin and anteater) have shown that these ribs proably increase the stiffness of the body.
So possibly a stiffer body has advantages in the way they swim, but this is purely speculative at the moment!
Hi this is Anton on Jane’s blog. This morning we discovered that the second rib on the left side of the animal is broken. We can tell from the bloody area around the break that the animal suffered this injury prior to death. Dead animals don’t bleed. This injury probably occured at the time of the stranding but most likely did not contribute to cause of death.
