Blue Whale Project

In April 2014, nine adult Blue Whales had been discovered dead, entombed in ice off the western coast of Newfoundland. These whales represent as much as four percent of the known western North Atlantic population of this iconic, endangered species, which consists of between 200 to 450 individuals. The Blue Whale is the largest species of animal that has ever lived on earth, outweighing the biggest known sauropod dinosaur twofold. In May 2014, a small ROM team traveled to Newfoundland to salvage a Blue Whale that had washed ashore in the hopes of turning this tragedy into a positive research and education story. The town council of Woody Point, NL had voted three to two in favour of allowing the suddenly famous whale to be brought to their town from nearby Trout River. Once it arrived, the team would be tasked with collecting scientific information and tissue samples for study and recovering the enormous skeleton.

The carefully tagged and documented bones, including the skull, were loaded onto two trucks. Together with the numerous tissues samples and the huge heart, the remains of both whales were driven back to Ontario. In the fall of 2015, the whale bones were buried in a mixture of manure and sawdust for a year of composting to remove any remaining flesh and tissue.In the interim, the ROM has begun a project in collaboration with Memorial University to obtain the complete genetic sequence (genome) of the Blue Whale. These data will be an invaluable aid in more precisely determining evolutionary relationships of whales and levels of genetic diversity in North Atlantic Blue Whales. We hope to make this information available both to the scientific community and to the public as part of our display in 2017.

In the fall of 2015, the ROM prepared the heart for its journey to Guben Plastinate, Germany, where it will undergo the process of being plastinated by the internationally renowned Von Hagen team. Shipping a preserved specimen of this size and fragility is a detailed and labour-intensive affair, and required a team of eight. Upon arrival in Germany the first step towards plastination was undertaken. This involved the daunting task of injecting the blood vessels of the hart with polymer. The heart will return to the ROM for display in 2017 where it will be the only Blue Whale heart on display in the world.