Phase IV - Bone Cleaning

One of the things we learned is that burying the whale in sandy soil and waiting for 4 years is an effective way to clean a whale skeleton by letting the microbes do most of the work.

For the most part, our whale's bones were clean of tissue and only required hosing with an adjustable pressure nozzle and garden hose to remove most of the sand, soil and a little connective tissue. The bones were stored at the National Marine Fisheries Service Enforcement Facility at Gibson Cove in Kodiak.

As they were cleaned, they were deposited in metal mesh crates (40 year old king crab cookers) on the end of a dock where sun could shine on them and the rain could rinse them throughout the winter. The small bones were soaked in soapy, warm water and scrubbed, then dried inside.

Whale bones are surprisingly porous and light, except for the dense ribs and caudal vertebrae. This is because they hold a lot of fat that can take months or even years to completely drip out. Therefore, it is wise to just let them sit outside for a year in a secure place where they are exposed to the elements but not critters that would drag them off, gnaw on them, or walk away with them...

Many of our bones were very brittle when we first dug them up but hardened over time.

Volunteers scrubbed each bone with warm soapy water and a number of different brushes. Dawn dishwashing liquid has proven to be the most effective soap for removing oils. In Kodiak we learned that during the EXXON Valdez oil spill in 1989 when hundreds of our sea birds and marine mammals were drenched with oil. Volunteers used Dawn liquid soap to scrub oil-saturated feathers and fur to clean the oiled critters so that they could be returned to their homes.

>> Some tips for a successful future project.

....