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Since Tallulah is the largest component in the new water gallery it was important to get her into place first, and then move on to installing all the other sections of the exhibit around her. Although she was the largest and most logistically challenging to move in and install, there are now all kinds of smaller issues that present equally big challenges. While initially all the focus was on Tallulah, now it has to be in 100 different places at once! Some of the projects the exhibit team are currently working on include installing large models of a narwhal, a shark, a beluga whale and a giant sun fish! They are also testing the sound for a variety of components, installing display cases around Tallulah that will eventually house various aquatic specimens (these cases also act as a handy barrier between Tallulah and the public who might want to try and cop a feel!), putting up plastic panels for information, as well as installing hardware to support the many different sections of the exhibit. In the past week, loads of progress has been made in the water gallery to start bringing everything together, and it’s a good thing since there are fewer than two months before the re-opening–its crunch time!
The Beluga Whale and The Narwhal
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- Following thousands of hours of labour, design and toil…Tallulah is complete. And she is MAGNIFICENT!)
The animal care technician had a wonderful surprise recently! While caring for our friends in the freshwater aquarium, she found eggs on the predatory side of the tank (see previous posts about how the freshwater tank is divided). Further great news is that there were two separate species of eggs – indicated by two different colours.
As soon as they were discovered, the technician decided to move them to the small-game side of the tank – hoping that this would keep them safe. However, when she returned to check on them, one of the “docile fish” was having himself a delicious snack of caviar! So, the next step was to further isolate the eggs by placing them in a floating basket within the tank. This will keep them safe and in the same climate and environment to which they are accustomed. Now we can only wait and see if/how these eggs develop.
This news is very exciting for the exhibits team. And it’s not simply the excitement that accompanies new babies, but because it means that the climate and ecosystem they have created in that particular tank so closely mimics nature, that the fish’s reproductive cycles have continued on as though they were still in the wild. They are comfortable and secure enough to produce offspring – which gives the team confidence that these fish have adapted very well to their new home!
Now that all of Tallulah’s parts have been safely moved into the Water Gallery, it’s time to start setting her up! The first stages have gone relatively smoothly, just a few little technical difficulties with some of the equipment, but nothing that caused major disruptions. They started at the front of her body by putting her cranium on custom-designed posts (which will eventually be disguised by a series of other specimens on display and information panels), and then moved to her spine and rib cage, which are being suspended from the ceiling. Because Tallulah was found washed up on a beach, it wasn’t possible to recover all of her bones, although they sure came close! Roughly 90 – 95% of her full skeleton was recovered which is a really high percentage for display, especially for an animal this size! To fill in the blanks where certain bones weren’t found, casts are made so that she will appear as a complete skeleton. She is missing a few ribs; one full and two half ribs to be exact. See if you can guess which ones are casts when you visit the Museum after our grand opening in May!
Tallulah's Skull
You might also notice that her skull is in two pieces. This is because she died at such a young age that the bones hadn’t had the chance to fuse together like they eventually do in more mature whales. This was actually a blessing in disguise for the crew who is installing her, because it made moving the pieces in and them mounting them about half as difficult as it could have been! This, however, is the only thing about Tallulah that can be considered small. Did you know that, even as a young 4-6 year old whale, if she had given birth to a calf it would have been the size of a mini-van?! That’s no ordinary-sized pelvis that can handle a feat like that! Needless to say, as the crew works its way through Tallulah’s skeleton towards her tail, it is very exciting to see it all come together. Since this is the first time she will be fully assembled in one room, I’m just beginning to understand how truly massive this creature is, and I’m certain Tallulah the blue whale will be a memorable part of the museum experience for future visitors!
Tallulah's Spine
The Pacific Aquarium will be a prominent feature of the Water Gallery–the first thing visitors will see upon entering the gallery. CMN’s exhibition technicians have been caring for and grooming the amazing and beautiful creatures for years, while the gallery and aquarium were being prepared.
Some of my favourites are:
grunt sculpins don't swim; they use their pectoral fins to "walk" along the sea floor
The evolutionarily-challenged Grunt Sculpin. In nature, this hopping and scooting fish would inhabit tide pools and rocky areas up to 165m deep. These amazing little fish don’t swim; they crawl around on the ocean floor, using enlarged pectoral fins as limbs. The elongated rays of the pectoral fins have almost no webbing, enhancing the spiny appearance of this fish.
Sea anemone: a beautiful an graceful predator
The graceful-yet-predatory Sea Anemone. These beautiful polyps attach to the sea floor by an adhesive foot, at the bottom of their soft, cylindrical bodies. The top of the column is a ring of stinging tentacles, surrounding the mouth. When prey is stung by the tentacles, it becomes paralyzed, allowing the meal to be moved into the gastrovascular cavity for digestion.
Sea Urchins are the spiky cousins of starfish
The spiny-yet-docile Sea Urchin. It is amazing to think that these prickly, globe-shaped urchins are actually in the same class as starfish! That is due to the Echinoderm’s five-fold symmetry (five arms on the Starfish, five segments in the dome of the Urchin). These spiky sweeties feed mostly on algae, but they are an easy and delicious meal for sea otters, eels and even humans – who harvest urchins for roe.
You may remember this juvenile Largemouth Bass from an earlier post…he had been found on the “small game” side of the freshwater aquarium, eating the bait fish (in this case an Emerald Shiner).
You see, in order to demonstrate a more comprehensive ecosystem and food chain, we wanted to show both large game and small game fish in the same tank. However, this poses a problem in that the big guys will eat (as seen before) all of the little guys. The solution is an amazing design; the aquarium is discreetly bisected, dividing it into two separate sections.
This small bass had found a bit of an “overpass”- a very narrow gap at the top of the rock wall – where it was possible to shimmy and wiggle his way onto the other side (very sneaky!). This would have taken fortitude, spirit…guts! It would have been a perilous, risky endeavor. And it paid off…he was KING on the small game side of the tank, not to mention having all the food he could eat!
Imagine his defeated disappointment when he was captured and put back on the large game side. Now he’s just a small fish in a big pond tank again.
It’s no secret that Tallulah has a bit of a body odour problem. Despite multiple treatments to try and prevent this from happening, Tallulah’s bones continue to leak oil because of the high amount of fat concentration found in whales. And that oil stinks! One of the methods used to treat the oily bones was burial, and unfortunately staff members don’t have all the details surrounding the burial since it happened over 30 years ago. They know the bones were buried in sandy clay-based soil in the NCC tree nursery on Russell Road, but they don’t know if some of the bones were wrapped in some sort of plastic or material that may have prevented the soil from doing what it could. These soil conditions aren’t ideal for treating the oily bones, and it is believed that the process of burying them was done rather hastily, so unfortunately the bones still contained some oil when they were dug up eight years later! More recently, staff members have tried to deal with the odour issue by constructing giant enzyme baths where Tallulah’s bones were left to soak, in hopes that the remaining oil would be broken down. Some of the oilier bones were even dunked in the baths a few times!
One of Tallulah's vertebrae, which is still leaking oil after multiple treatments!
The bones have now been treated and cleaned as much as possible, and moved into the gallery for installation. There is still some oil remaining in the bones, but the smell issue has been greatly improved. Tallulah’s humerus is probably the oiliest of all her bones (and therefore the smelliest!), and recently during the installation process, a hole was drilled into this bone (in order to suspend her for display) which released a whole new wave of odours! Once the bones are installed there isn’t anything that can be done to continue cleaning or treating them; we just have to hope it doesn’t create future problems. Another institution with a similar issue has actually had to set up drip pans to catch the oil because there is so much of it still coming out of the bones that they have on display! So if you’re visiting Tallulah after the grand re-opening in May and notice a bit of a funny smell in the air, just remember all the work that has gone into cleaning her up, and how much worse it could be!
The process of moving Tallulah, the 65 foot blue whale that will go on display in the new Water Gallery, is complete and went off without a hitch! The move itself was contracted out to a professional moving company to ensure there wouldn’t be any problems. To make things as straightforward as possible, Tallulah was moved in (relatively!) small sections. Moving racks and shelves were also built for all of the different parts to ensure that during the move there wouldn’t be damage. The racks were constructed out of wood and metal and layered with foam to cradle the bones. Once the bones were in place everything was wrapped in plastic, another measure to keep the precious cargo protected. There was some concern that because Tallulah is so big, and can only be broken down so much, certain parts might not fit into the elevator. During the construction in the museum, two-by-four planks of wood were installed inside the elevator to protect it from all the heavy duty machinery and tools required for construction. Because some of Tallulah’s bones were so close in size to the inside of the elevator, the two by fours had to be removed. Even though at times there were only a few centimetres to spare, everything fit!
Tallulah's cranium after the move
Now that all of Tallulah’s parts have been safely moved into the museum, the next step is to put it all together, which is estimated to take about two weeks. Make sure to check back to follow how this process goes!
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