The Royal Ontario Museum has begun cutting up one of the two blue whale carcasses that washed up off the coast of Newfoundland.
The ROM's biodiversity department has been posting photos to Twitter of the process, viewable below. (*Discretion may be advised, as the photos could be disturbing.)
"There is nothing on earth that I've ever encountered that smells worse than a dead whale," said the museum's Mark Engstrom. "It's a real shame and it's a tragedy that they've died, but we want to recover them for scientific purposes."
Engstrom says the first things to be removed are the skin and the blubber.
The whale have been decomposing off the Newfoundland coast.
And we've arrived! Took 3 trucks to pull it in. @romtoronto #bluewhale pic.twitter.com/9jrhvleON3
— ROMBiodiversity (@ROMBiodiversity) May 8, 2014
Team and I cutting apart the whale. @romtoronto #bluewhale pic.twitter.com/YAPEstTvU0
— ROMBiodiversity (@ROMBiodiversity) May 8, 2014
Good morning! The team is already hard at work. @romtoronto #bluewhale pic.twitter.com/Q0GvoaZqFz
— ROMBiodiversity (@ROMBiodiversity) May 9, 2014
Removing pieces of bone. This one is a piece of the spinal cord. @romtoronto #bluewhale pic.twitter.com/NWktYM92gE
— ROMBiodiversity (@ROMBiodiversity) May 9, 2014
Getting to the good stuff. The intestines. @romtoronto #blue whale pic.twitter.com/lgrbCGECHT
— ROMBiodiversity (@ROMBiodiversity) May 9, 2014
