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It's a poignant sight.
One of the world's largest living animals
washed ashore on a remote beach in Western Victoria.
But this 16 metre long Fin Whale presents a rare opportunity.
The Fin Whale is a common whale around the world.
There's not a lot known about them.
They're quite a cryptic species in that they
spend a lot of time offshore.
And so we don't generally see them around the coastal areas.
We really know very little about these species.
So they do tend to feed off shore in places like the Bonney
Upwelling.
And it's pretty much a data-deficient species.
The plan is to acquire the whale for the museum's collection.
But it first has to be brought further up
the beach away from the water.
This animal, in particular, it's important
that we can try and get a sample of the specimen,
whether it's the skull, or the entire skeleton,
or even a tissue would be great.
We don't have any other complete records of the Fin Whale.
It's a very limited information species.
This animal weighs about 25 tonnes,
so two excavators are needed to move it.
Once it is in safe place, a trained team
of Museums Victoria preparators and volunteers can get to work.
The first task is to remove the whale's flesh.
And that involves huge knives with the assistance
of the machinery itself to take the slabs of blubber off.
And we dissect it into smaller parts.
So then it can be transported.
Even with the assistance of the excavators,
it takes several days to strip the animal
of flesh and blubber.
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Once the bones are exposed, larger sections
like the vertebrae, ribs, and head can be carefully removed.
To go into the museum's collection, though,
the bones must be cleaned of even the smallest
bits of flesh, so they need to be
moved to another location where they can be buried.
We're taking it to a private farm, where he has a location,
a lovely location, that he's prepared for us,
slashed the grass.
So when it gets to location, we'll
be able to unload, and with the front-end loader,
cover most of that.
We'll just get reports from the farmer periodically
to just give us an indication whether it's all holding up.
Over the coming months, the small creatures
that live in the soil will help to break down
the remaining soft tissue.
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Eight months later, the bones are ready to be unearthed.
And in that time, there's been quite a bit
of moisture and activity in the soil
here from microbes, bacteria, and some insects who
have gone about their business in breaking down
that tissue that was left remaining on the bones
when they were covered here.
And it's done a fantastic job, as you can see.
We've finished cleaning up all of that remaining tissue.
We've got pretty much clean bones here.
There's still a little bit of cleaning
in places, which we'll do when we get it back to Melbourne.
Before it actually goes into the collection,
it will also have to be frozen so that if there is any insects
or bugs in little nooks and crannies of the specimen--
it's the pest control method that's
used for all museum collection objects before they go in.
One of the last bones to be exposed is the skull,
and it's important that it stay intact for research purposes.
What we're doing is we're just getting it ready
now to attach the slings and make a support that
goes under the rostrum here.
This is a very fragile, weak part of the skull.
It's very thin.
And we're just making a support to rest it
on the back of a truck.
We're going to use the front-end loader with an excavator arm
with slings to lift the skull onto the back of the trucks.
Most of the smaller bones we can manually
load straight onto the truck.
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The Fin Whale skeleton is taken to its new home
at the museum's large object collection store.
This is where some of the biggest
items in the Victorian State Collection
are held, including hundreds of other whale skeletons.
Having this specimen here means that it's
available for exhibition to the public.
And it's also accessible worldwide to researchers
anywhere who wish to come and study it and use it
in their data sets.
All the hard work that has gone into cleaning and preparation
ensures researchers can easily access
important parts of the skeleton, like the whale's ear bones.
The ear bones of baleen whales are really important
for understanding not only their taxonomy--
so identifying species--
but also for investigating and understanding their hearing,
because that's such an important part of their biology really.
And because there are so few in museums worldwide,
every single individual that is added to a collection
is valuable.
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