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.

Some of the topics we’re exploring in the 20th Century History exhibition relate to major local and international events, some are aligned with social or technological changes, and some revolve around personalities.

One of New Zealand’s most memorable personalities was Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. Muldoon dominated public life in the 1970s and early 1980s in a way that few politicians before or since have managed. When we spoke with members of the public about the exhibition early in 2007, Muldoon was the politican who seemed to have left the most vivid impression, even among those who were very young at the time.

One of the factors contributing to Muldoon’s cultural survival is probably his ubiquity in the media. Not only was he one of the first politicians to make effective use of television (you can view the National Party’s notorious 1975 ‘Dancing Cossacks’ TV ad on nzhistory.net), but his distinctive features were eminently caricaturable. Every political cartoonist had their own Muldoon, and he was also impersonated on television (most memorably by David McPhail on the satirical shows A Week of It and McPhail and Gadsby). We’ve found this great toby jug bearing the unforgettable Muldoon countenance!

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.

We’re very impressed and gratified by the response so far to our World War One Memorial Project. Since its launch last month, we’ve had 95 images of New Zealand memorials contributed from all over the country.

The towns and cities so far represented are: Akaroa, Alexandra, Auckland, Cambridge, Eastbourne, Glenorchy, Hawera, Hokianga, Hunterville, Levin, Makara, Mangaweka, Matamata, Maxwell, Nelson, Opunaki, Pahiatua, Palmerston North, Patea, Picton, Pihana, Pirongia, Porirua, Portage, Rotorua, Shannon, Taihape, Te Aroha, Waverley, Wellington (National War Memorial, Brooklyn, Ataturk Memorial), and Woodville.

Have a look at the images on our Flickr site.

Many thanks to everyone who has participated to date. This is a long-term project, so we hope you’ll keep photographing New Zealand’s war memorials and posting them on Flickr, particularly if you live in an area that hasn’t been represented yet.

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 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.