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Recently, I was alerted to the presence of a whale that had washed up in Antigonish County prior to the winter ice-up. The whale is in the intertidal, so I'm a bit worried of it becoming dislodged and swept away. Hence, I have obtained a Department of Fisheries and Oceans permit to get the salvage process directly underway. My team of anatomy students and I have already spent about five hours on site. What have we collected? We did not get three Norwegians, we did not get two Swedes, we only got one fin. We're due to go back very shortly and collect more; cutting through blubber (which is much more than just fat) is a slow, knife-dulling process. http://people.stfx.ca/rlauff/personel/recent.html I have alerted Hal Whitehead's team (he is a whale biologist at Dalhousie who happens to work with Sperm Whales), and by extension, the stranding network. According to Andrew Hebda at the Museum, this is only the seventh-recorded beached Sperm Whale for the province. If possible, I will be collecting enough material to share with the NSMNH. I believe there is a representative from the Acadia museum on this list...please get in touch with me. The same goes for other universities with formal collections; you will all need permits for any bits; I am not at liberty to hand away any pieces from this (or any other) animal under the terms of my own permits. I do not know how it died, there are no obvious marks to suggest impact. I won't be getting into the stomach for awhile (if at all)...once that is opened, I don't think working around it will be olfactorily-pleasant. To be able to work on such an animal is, for a zoologist with a passion for anatomy, a once-in-a-career opportunity. The local man who took us to the whale told me that I looked like a kid opening presents at Christmas! Randy _________________________________ RF Lauff Way in the boonies of Antigonish County, NS.
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