Whale bones

Do you remember the post about the dead grey whale found near Wrangell Island earlier this summer?  This unfortunate being.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go with a Forest Service biologist and some local high school students to collect the bones of this guy.  The students will eventually attempt to piece together the skeleton for biology class I guess and ultimately, the skull and maybe the other bones will be donated to our local museum.

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.

Update:  I was recently told that the whale biologists are interested in examining the bones of this whale as their surprising lightness and brittleness are not normal and may provide some clues as to the cause of this whale's death.  I'll keep you informed as I learn more.