Here is what is left, a pile of bones easily overlooked on a remote beach, the rest of the whale having been consumed by both aquatic and terrestrial creatures over the course of the summer. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust although ash and dust are not very fitting metaphors for a creature that lived its entire life in the water so maybe atoms to atoms, energy to energy are more fitting. The interesting aspects of the experience were the surprising weight of the bones, or more accurately, the surprising lack of weight of the bones. For such a large animal, the bones were surprisingly light and fragile. I don't know how much of that is due to 4 months out in the elements and immersion in saltwater and how much is because of normal anatomical characteristics of grey whale bones. I could easily carry a vertebra in each hand and 4 of us were able to easily manipulate the skull onto a landing craft style boat. The skull is very alien compared to another animal and was rather uninteresting as there are no horns or antlers or teeth as well as no features that resemble a "face" of any kind.
This is a photo of several of the vertebrae and ribs in the boat as well as the skull in the upper part of the photo.
The most interesting feature to me was this one:
The "hand" of the whale hidden inside the flippers of a living whale. It's pretty obvious that there are fingers bones and knuckles still left over the millenia of evolving into a whale.
And so passes the physical existence of this grey whale.
