It is one whale of a challenge.
A group of University of British Columbia scientists travelled to Prince Edward Island this week to dig up a blue whale skeleton that has been buried near the shore of Tignish for 20 years.
The scientists plan to put the 80,000 kilogram-skeleton on a train and bring it back to British Columbia.
After 20 years underground, they thought the skeleton would have disintegrated and become unrecoverable, but were surprised to find the entire whale still encased in its skin.
"We see a lot of the white blubber, the bluish skin and the muscle as well," said Andrew Trites, a researcher at the UBC Biodiversity Research Centre who is leading the exhumation and preparation of the skeleton.
"We haven't cut into the innards yet, and there might some surprises there, but on the outside it looks like a giant mummy ... it's an awful lot more work."
Once the skeleton is shipped to B.C., the team of scientists will spend the next year and a half cleaning, repairing broken bones and assembling the skeleton.
It will then be put on display at UBC's new Beaty Biodiversity Research Centre, which is scheduled to open next year.
There are only four other blue whale skeletons on display in North America.
When it opens, the Biodiversity Centre will hold more than two million specimens of mammals, fish, shells, fossils, insects, birds and plants.
Facts about the blue whale:
- there are an estimated 4,500 blue whales left in the world, down from 350,000 before whaling activities began
- the biggest animal ever to have lived on earth -- even bigger than dinosaurs
- longer than two 40-foot long school buses parked one behind the other
- the whale's heart is the size of a car, and its arteries are large enough for a human baby to crawl through
- the call of the whale is 190 decibels, the loudest animal, and much louder than a person can shout
- they inhabit every ocean on the planet, and travel between polar waters and tropical waters
- the whale is listed as an endangered species under Canada's Species at Risk Act
