Whale recovery slideshow

Warning: images may be considered graphic by some viewers.
Volunteers, students and researchers spent 13 days recovering the skeleton of a 73-foot-long blue whale that washed ashore dead on Oct. 19 2009 south of Fort Bragg, California. The bones have been buried in compost to allow microbes to "clean" soft tissue, leaving them clean and white. A permit is being issued to the City of Fort Bragg to reassemble the bones at a yet-to-be-determined location.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• blue
• whale
• fort
• bragg
• 95437
• mendocino

[dali366]

You people are heros doing that thankless task-you must have stank to high heaven!

Good luck with the skeleton!

[4120Wade]

Makes me think of the "flensing" chapter from Moby Dick. The vertebrae are awesome........huge, industrial, like ship's screws. This great creature was fatally wounded by collision with a large, presumably commercial, ship. But was it first deafened by Navy sonar? If this animal does not inspire respect in the viewer for nature's wonders, then nothing can. We must work harder to protect those few still surviving.