Kodiak Daily Mirror Article from Thursday, February 22, 2007

Together again for the first time
Reconstruction team refits 165 gray whale bones for Kodiak display

By BRYAN MARTIN
Mirror Writer

All the king's men and all the king's horses did put the pieces back together again, for the skeleton of a California gray whale.

It may not have been true for Humpty Dumpty, but for a whale soon to be on display in Kodiak at the new National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center now under construction, all 165 bones are being fitted with nuts and bolts like a puzzle, with silicon and steel pipe and rods providing bonding.

Reconstruction of the California whale is unlike any other in the United States.

Its rearticulation, a term for putting the whale back together, has several characteristics that make it a rare specimen.

The whale arrived on Pasagshak Beach in May of 2000 from its migratory route in waters of the Baja, a long peninsula bordering Mexico and the Gulf of California.

Some claim the whale as the Mexican gray whale rather than California gray whale because it originates in northwest Mexico's Baja waters.

What makes this one whale special is the way it is being put back together.

Conservationist Stacy Studebaker, who heads the reconstruction team, traveled coast to coast making observations of other skeletal whale displays to find out how best to display "Gordie," the name of the gray being restored. The whale is named after her 95-year-old father who also helped in the restoration.

Studebaker visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts and the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Boston to gather facts about whale restoration. She also spent a great amount of time at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

There are only about 15 places in the United States, Canada and Mexico that display gray whales. Studebaker also made visits to Baja, Monterrey, Calif., Oregon and Washington.

The gray whale, to hang from the top second floor of the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, will be the only re-articulated gray whale skeleton on display in Alaska.

Studebaker also enlisted restoration expertise from Lee Post of Homer to help in the Kodiak project. Post is the author of a series of 10 books on animal restoration, including sea lions, moose, ungulates, birds, other whales and bears.

In fact, Studebaker and Post are thinking about another project that will put a Kodiak brown bear in the refuge center in the same place as the whale, the only spot in the world where the two could be seen together in the same room.

Studebaker and Post have been working long days this week on connecting vertebrae and other joints of the whale.

They have found silicon to be the best material to replace cartilage, but have to put it on in layers. In addition to the many skeletal pieces, there is a great amount of time requiring slippery soap to handle the silicon and the layering.

There are 56 pieces in the backbone, with each vertebra joined by pins and rods. The whale is 37 feet long. The skull is 9 feet long. The tail has 16 pieces and is about 7 feet. Attached to the backbone pieces will be 14 ribs on each side.

Then there are the 7-foot flippers and enormous flukes. There are no bones in the flukes but there are many in the flippers, some of which look like fingers, knucklebones and carpals or wrist bones.

Once the skeleton is complete, including cleaning and joint work, it will never be seen put entirely together until it is moved inside the visitor center. It would be too big to get through any of the center's entranceways as a complete whale. It will have to be moved in parts: the skull and jawbones, main body, tail, flippers and ribs.

Studebaker and Post are spending today and Friday attaching ribs to the backbone to make sure all the fits happen. The ribs will have to be detached before the whale is moved.

The move to the whale's permanent resting place inside the center is expected in mid-September. The center is expected to open by the end of October.

One thing that makes the whale a one-of-a-kind is the motion that has been built into its pose. It is constructed like an S-curve.

Welder Stanley Wolrich bent a 2-inch steel pipe that runs the entire length of the backbone so that the whale on display will look as if swimming through ocean waters. Otherwise, the whale would look stiff, like a giant toothpick with legs.

Behind the whale, after it is hanging from the second floor, will be a wall of ocean blue. The whale can be seen from all sides, from bottom to top, and underneath as viewers climb the stairs from the first floor to the second floor, which measures about 25 feet high. The whale's head will be positioned in a downward motion, with an arch in its back, tail up, just above an opening between the two floors.

Studebaker, who worked with the visitor center architects, said the refuge building was designed to accommodate the whale.

There is a certain amount of mystery attached to the whale. No one knows why or how the whale died when it washed on the beach at Pasagshak. There was no physical damage.

Then there is the question of the whale's actual age. Most place the male whale as a young adult, about 7 to 10 years old. But some whales can live 80 to 100 years. The epiphyses were fused, a sign the whale had stopped growing. An epiphysis is a flat bone plate at the anterior and posterior parts of each vertebra that, in the early stages of growth, is separated by cartilage but later ossifies with the vertebra, leaving growth lines similar to a ring on a tree trunk.

The gray whale - like all other mammals, from mouse to man - has seven cervical vertebrae or neck bones. In most mature large whales, the cervical vertebrae are fused, but none were in this whale.

"It's a mystery," Studebaker said.

"Vertebrae fuse together in some big whales. However, on this whale, none of the neck vertebrae were," she said.

Studebaker said the entire whale project has been a process of discovery. After teaching biology for 20 years in Kodiak, she has a second sense about all things science. She discovered the dead whale floating in the water while kayaking in a bay off Pasagshak Beach and saw it as an opportunity, "the ultimate science project."

That was seven years ago this coming May. With not much experience, Studebaker put together a team that would eventually number more than 100 people.

The first problem was how to preserve the whale after it washed ashore. The Kodiak Gray Whale Project was organized and the Alaska Conservation Foundation gave the organization a grant for $60,000.

Studebaker and some other biologists decided to dig a 40-foot long hole about 10 feet deep. The whale was buried. Four years later it was dug up, free of tons of whale blubber and bones nearly clean for preservation.

After unearthing the whale, the bones were hauled in truckloads to the National Marine Fishery Service at Gibson Cove for cleaning and storage and then finally hauled to the Fisheries Science Center on Near Island, where it is today. The pieces are spread out in a large basement area on top of shelves and work table.

The main skeleton is stretched on a 12-foot-long steel cart mounted on wheels that has adjustable racks to hold the backbone, vertebrae and the rest of the skeletal parts.

With the whale project now in its final phase, Post could write another book on discoveries made during the restoration of Kodiak's Gordie the whale.

Post, who was born on Woody Island, is known as a trailblazer in scientific rearticulation. He is one of only a handful of people in the country that knows how to do whale restoration.

Another aspect of the project is photographing all the bones for a scientific catalog of record.

Local photographer Hank Pennington said the whale could be reassembled from the countless photos he has taken. There will be a photographic bone catalog available for educational viewing by students and public alike.

Local wildlife artist Bruce Nelson is completing publishable scientific illustrations of the bones that will be made into prints, which will also be available.

At one time, gray whales were on the verge of extinction due primarily to commercial whaling during the latter half of the 19th century into the mid-20th century. Due to congressional action to protect the once-endangered whales, they now number about 22,000.