NEWPORT, Ore. — A group of researchers at Oregon State University are hoping to raise a 78-foot blue whale carcass that washed ashore near Gold Beach.
The Coos Bay World reports the whale washed ashore in November 2015 and has been submerged in Yaquina Bay allowing scavengers to clean the bones.
Researchers with the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University hope to bring the skeleton to the surface and treat it with chemicals to get oil out of the bones and keep it from becoming rancid. They hope to display it for the public as an educational exhibit at the new Marine Studies Building that the university will open in late 2019 on the Hatfield Marine Science Center campus in Newport.
The project will cost $125,000.
