Bay’s whale soars
A pilot whale whose ocean journey ended with a stranding on Farewell Spit has embarked on a new life at Golden Bay Museum.
Alan McLean, a local electrician whose own five-year odyssey helped bring the whale to life, said he hopes it will inspire generations of children.
‘‘Just about every class in Golden Bay has been out to see it. Home schooled kids, people from Alaska, Netherlands, the Chatham Islands.’’
McLean’s mission began back in 2014, walking the long stretch of Farewell Spit after a pilot whale stranding.
He admitted it was an odd idea for an electrician. ‘‘I knew nothing about whales,’’ he said. ‘‘But I thought the museum deserved one.’’
With Department of Conservation staff, McLean fenced off his chosen whale to protect it from marauding pigs.
Eight months later, he returned for the bones and began the long process of cleaning them in a shipping container, using modified containers with pumps and heaters.
‘‘It looked like something out of [Texas] Chainsaw Massacre, blood and bones.’’
As he worked, he noticed the bones start to blacken. His heart sunk. Reluctant to settle for anything less than the perfect whale, he started over, locating another whale two weeks later when 400 whales stranded on the spit.
This time, McLean didn’t wait for the flesh to rot from the bones. He enlisted the help of two teenage girls from Collingwood Area School to dissect the mammal with sharp knives. ‘‘They were fantastic,’’ he said.
When he was done, he had a ‘‘bag of bones’’, which he handed to two skeleton articulators.
Jim McKay took time off from his job at Nelson’s Provincial Museum to join Rick Morcom, who had pieced together a sperm whale at a previous role at the Nantucket Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, United States.
Over two weeks, the men spent hundreds of hours labouring over their task.
‘‘You have got to have a clean skeleton with good bones,’’ Morcom said. ‘‘They can be very fragile, and you have got to drill into them.’’
The small details that were revealed as the whale came together made the work endlessly fascinating, Morcom said.
He pointed out the two small pelvic bones, that were suspended below the skeleton’s frame, evolutionary remnants from ancient land-going ancestors.
‘‘It’s pretty rare to have bones this small and fine survive the drying and cleaning process,’’ Morcom said.
‘‘You can even see its ear bones,’’ McLean added. ‘‘They’re the most amazing bones, the shape of them is something to behold.’’
The result was ‘‘amazing’’, McLean said.
‘‘At the unveiling I kept staring at it. Seeing it up there is better than I thought I could achieve.
‘‘With the way we treat our oceans, I hope children will come and look at this and wonder, then go away and be a scientist and make the world better.’’