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Hi All, July 7, 2008
Having no experience in these matters I can only imagine events from
first principles but I would expect most of a whale to rapidly become
anoxic and this would lead to very slow decay rates that approached
zero. The rationale being, that the skin and blubber layer would act as
an O2 barrier and initial decay, within this barrier, would rapidly
decrease O2 to near zero.
Consequently I think decay rates would be greatly enhanced if skin
and blubber were removed from at least half (whatever ends up facing
upward) of the surface. Also it should be covered with topsoil or at
least compost with some mineral component and given a good seeding of
ants and flesh/hide eating insects.
Yt, Dave Webster
Paul S. Boyer wrote:
> People will take occasional bones if it is left out in the open.
> Non-human scavengers will chew on the bones for their calcium content.
>
> I have been told that at the US Nat'l Museum they put whale skulls on
> the roof and let nature clean then up for several years. The man in
> charge told me that he once brought a rank skull of a pilot whale,
> wrapped in burlap and paper, to Washington in a railway passenger car.
> Soon after leaving the station, he had the whole car to himself!
>
>
> There must be some group (a university or museum) who would like this
> skeleton. It should be buried in a porous soil (without too much
> clay), preferably wrapped in some plastic which is perforated, but
> which will make it easy to recover the bones when they are dug up, say
> ten years later. Even whales have some small bones which can be lost
> if one is not careful. Maybe the flippers could be put in mesh bags,
> like those bags they use for raising mussels, only larger.
>
>
> You will need a permit, because it is illegal even to have a piece of
> something which came from a whale That is to make sure that you
> haven't been out a-whalin' in your spare time.
>
>
> —Paul
>
>
>
> On Jul 7, 2008, at 5:12 PM, Randy Lauff wrote:
>
>
>> And hopefully, if a museum does recover it, they won't bury it in the
>> lifeless depths like in PEI...what was it...20 years and there was
>> still flesh on it (someone help with the details here)? There has got
>> to be some Crown land somewhere distant from folks where the whale
>> can be just laid on the surface...then you'll see the flesh disappear!
>>
>>
>>
>> Randy
>>
>> 2008/7/7 Laurie Murison < gmwhale@nbnet.nb.ca
>> <mailto:gmwhale@nbnet.nb.ca> >:
>>
>> I received an opinion from a marine mammalogist who has a
>> tremendous amount of experience dissecting dead baleen whales.
>>
>>
>>
>> He feels that the whale that live stranded was a sei whale ...
>>
>> Hopefully the New Brunswick Museum will be able to recover the
>> skeleton for their collection.
>>
>>
>>
>> Laurie Murison
>> Grand Manan Whale & Seabird Research Station
>> 24 Route 776
>> Grand Manan, NB Canada E5G 1A1
>> 506 662 3804, Fax 506 662 9804
>> http://www.gmwsrs.org <http://www.gmwsrs.org/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Randy
>> _________________________________
>> RF Lauff
>> Way in the boonies of
>> Antigonish County, NS.
>>
>
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