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A Whale of a Tale: the
story of Right Whale #2030
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Imagine you awoke one morning and, with no prior warning, found that you needed to dispose of a 30-ton whale. This is exactly the situation in which the PRI staff found themselves! On October 21, 1999 a call came in from the National Marine Fisheries Service to PRI's director, Dr. Warren Allmon. A 44 foot-long northern right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) had been spotted dead off the coast of Cape May, New Jersey. If PRI could help flense the whale (separate the flesh from the bones), it was welcome to have the skeleton. Early in 1999, PRI had expressed some interest in obtaining a whale skeleton through the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, so the call was not completely unexpected. Needless to say, it was an opportunity PRI could not afford to pass up. Within six hours of the initial call, the first of two PRI vehicles had left for Cape May. Three days later, on Sunday, October 24 1999, the bones of right whale #2030 arrived at PRI. |
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#2030 Comes to Ithaca The death of #2030 was the beginning of something big for the Paleontological Research Institution. The National Marine Fisheries Service notified PRI of the availability of a right whale skeleton upon discovery of the body of #2030. PRI staff traveled to the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Cape May, New Jersey, where the whale had been towed ashore. Along with several others from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, PRI staff and volunteers participated in flensing the whale and preparing it for transport. Flensing is a messy process: using only hooks and long knives, the extremely heavy, oily flesh is removed from the skeleton. Weighing approximately 30 tons, it took two days to flense the 44-foot long whale. The skeleton was then transported to Ithaca via a flat bed truck. Back at PRI, an army of staff and volunteers worked together to unload the skeleton and bury the bones in a bed of horse manure. The manure provides an ideal environment for the remaining flesh and oil to be removed from the bones over the course of several months. |
| Vertebrae from right whale #2030 back in Ithaca, NY, being covered in horse manure (above). The manure cleans the bones. | |
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| PRI staff and volunteers lay the bones of #2030 in a bed of horse manure (above). |
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Entangled! Whales often become entangled in fishing gear. More than 60% of right whales bear the scars of past entanglements. A severely entangled Northern right whale, identified by researchers as #2030, was spotted off the coast of Massachusetts in May 1999. Multiple strands of fishing rope were wrapped three times around its body, causing a wound to cut 7 inches into the blubber. |
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#2030 as seen from above, entangled
in fishing gear. From
the Center for Coastal Studies, Massachusetts.
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Researchers lost track of #2030 until early September
1999, when she was sighted in the summer feeding waters off the
coast of Nova Scotia in Canada's Bay of Fundy. Rescuers succeeded
in cutting two of the three encircling ropes in early September,
but the third remained. By attaching buoys with VHF and satellite
transmitters to the entangling rope, researchers continued to track
the movements of the whale. After the initial rescue attempt, #2030
headed south along the coast towards winter breeding waters. On
October 21, 1999, the body of an entangled right whale was discovered
floating off the coast of northern New Jersey. The position of the
entangling rope wrapped around the upper body and cutting deeply
into the blubber, unmistakably identified this whale as #2030.
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Right Whale #2030 alive in the Atlantic Ocean in 1999. The wound from the entangling fishing gear (the cause of its death) is visible across the body. |
Fewer than 300 Northern right whales remain in existence today. They are the most rare species of whale in the world and are considered endangered. The loss of even a single individual is cause for concern. Once the bones are assembled, #2030 will be one of the very few mounted right whale skeletons in the world. PRI will be able to exhibit a complete skeleton of very high quality, providing an important educational resource for teaching visitors of all ages about environmental conservation, evolutionary biology, and marine ecology, as well as pay tribute to the life and death of 2030. |
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