The Thames Whale Story

This evening I went to a celebration party at Tring Natural History Museum to see the skeleton of the Thames Whale. It is truely impressive.

This is the official information next to the exhibit:

On 19 January 2006 a six metre-long whale swam into the River Thames.
The female northern bottlenose whale was far from its home in the deep waters of the North Atlantic.

Over the next two days thousands of people lined the banks of the river in London to see the whale and watch the major rescue operation to tansport it back to sea. Sadly, despite the best efforts of rescuers and veterinary experts, the whale died.

This exhibition is not just about those three days and what happened next. It's also a chance to find out about the amazing collection this whale has joined, and what we can still learn from it.

At Tring Museum there is a gallery with the story and a variety of exhibits including nematode worms from the stomach of a whale, and the beaks of squid that were found in the stomach of this whale. Great interactive stuff for children too.

The whale skeleton is assembled like a giant jigsaw within a huge display cabinet - you can see the strings and some of the labels in the image.

It has taken 4 years to complete the whole process of disection, funding, preserving and assembling. If you look carefully you can see that the skeleton is lying on white absorbent material, this is because the bones are still secreting oil.

The most bizzare fact is that Persil washing powder is the product used to clean the bones.
The head of the project told of how he found the Persil helpline number and called on a Saturday afternoon. Imagine the surprise of the lad in the call centre on picking up the phone:
"Good afternoon and how can I help you?"
" Yes, this may sound strange but I want to know how to go about preserving a whale in Persil"
Apparently they were fantasticly helpful!

Incidentally Tring Museum hold a vast collection of taxidermy - much of the collection of the Rothschild Family, and is well worth a visit.