Volunteers unearthed the skeletal remains of a yearling humpback whale in Gig Harbor Thursday, one shovelful of composted horse manure at a time.
“I don’t know how much ‘goo’ you’re going to find,” marine biology and oceanography instructor Rus Higley told the group before it started.
Fortunately for the diggers, most of the bones were bare. Only the flippers were covered in a soupy mixture of decomposition, eliciting scrunched-up faces and prompting people to walk away.
The bones belonged to a whale that washed up on state-owned tidelands about a mile north of the opening to Gig Harbor just before Christmas last year. Researchers towed the carcass to the Thea Foss Waterway where it was loaded on a truck to make the trip back across the Tacoma Narrows. It has spent the last six months at a Gig Harbor farm where it was buried to allow for decomposition.
Higley manages the Marine Science and Technology Center at Highline College and has experience exhuming whale skeletons. Six years ago, he was part of a group that put together a gray whale skeleton at the Foss Waterway Seaport on the Tacoma waterfront.
This whale is also headed to the Seaport. Higley will act as a technical adviser to the Seaport and a group of Stadium High School students charged with piecing together the baby humpback.
Sixteen students will participate in the after-school program starting this fall. They’ll work on the whale twice a week from September to December. Along the way, they’ll also learn about marine biology, oceanography and even engineering.
Stadium biology teacher Phil Hertzog and two other Stadium science teachers will lead the students.
“We’re giving kids a chance to see real biology in action,” Hertzog said as he dug around the whale’s skull Thursday.
Through the course of the program, students will work with structural engineers to determine how to hang the 10,000-pound whale from the Seaport’s trusses without damaging the historic beams. They’ll also hear from marine biologists and learn about dissecting dead mammals.
Hertzog plans to ask the students to use what they learn to determine why the the humpback died.
A definitive cause of death hasn’t been determined, according to Jessie Huggins stranding coordinator for Cascadia Research Collective, the agency that conducted the whale necropsy.
Despite not being able to “determine with certainty” what killed the whale, Huggins said malnutrition was “severe enough to have played a role in the mortality, either as the direct cause of death or a contributing factor.”
Thursday’s volunteer corps drew from the Seaport, the Marine Science and Technology Center and Stadium faculty. Because school is already out for the summer, Stadium students weren’t at the dig, but Hertzog said they are excited to get involved when school resumes.
“I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said.
That’s also the belief of Jan Adams, the Seaport’s director of education. For years, she has wanted to do more to get students involved with the Seaport and the natural environment.
In January, Adams and Hertzog were at a meeting to talk about how Tacoma Public Schools and the Seaport could do more together.
“I leaned over and said ‘Hey, I have this whale,’ ” Adams joked Thursday.
Hertzog outlined the program and presented the curriculum to district officials, who approved.
“I think it’s going to be a dynamite learning experience,” Adams said. “I’m just thrilled. How often can you get this all in place so these kids can have this hands-on learning experience?”
On Thursday, volunteers carried the bones once they were uncovered a few hundred feet to a washing station where they were scrubbed with dish soap. At the end of the day, the bones were to be taken to a private location in Tacoma where they will be left outside to whiten under the summer sun.
Come September, the Stadium students will begin piecing together the 23-foot-long skeleton with pieces that range in size from 1 inch to more than 6 feet long.
“We have the ability to let them do the ultimate puzzle,” Higley said of the opportunity before the students.
