Phase I - Burial

On June 1st, 2000 the whale was buried just above high tide on state land at the head of Pasagshak Bay. Mike Anderson of Anderson Construction Co. contributed the equipment, time, and technical expertise to drag the 30-ton whale to the 10-foot deep and 45-foot long burial trench he excavated with a track hoe. The whale's flippers were wrapped with landscaping fabric and duct tape to ensure that the small bones in the flippers would not be lost. The burial trench was lined with more fabric before the whale was rolled into it. Team members collected cow and horse manure from the surrounding pasture that they sprinkled over the whale to increase the bacteria in the sterile sandy loam soil.

Before the whale was buried, a marine biologist with the University of Alaska Sea Grant Program named Kate Wynne took measurements and samples of the whale and performed a necropsy to try and determine the cause of the whale's death.

Whale measurements:
Body length: 36 feet
Body, curvilinear: 44 feet
Flukes: 9' 9"
Axillary girth: 20.8 feet

The cause of death of this whale was never confirmed but the whale was part of a large die-off event (see Gray Whale background). To the dismay of many biologists, more than 300 strandings, beached or floating dead whales were reported in 2000 along the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska.

In November of 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages Kodiak Wildlife Refuge for protection of Kodiak Brown Bear habitat, offered to help Stacy and her team with the excavation and treatment of the whale skeleton. The fully rearticulated skeleton will be displayed in their new visitor center that is soon to be constructed in downtown Kodiak. Since the focus of the interpretive and educational aspects of the new visitor center will naturally highlight the Kodiak Brown Bear, the whale skeleton will need to be part of a broader thematic context: the island ecosystem and native species.

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