“Cetacean Station” is North Haven Community School’s Vocational Arts workshop. Since the fall of 2004, I have been working with students here to “rearticulate” the skeletons of marine mammals that have been found dead.
That is to say, we have cleaned the bones of these oceangoing animals and fastened them back together. Then they are displayed as educational exhibits to be viewed by anyone interested in their beauty or biology.
We have rearticulated the skeletons of a white-beaked dolphin, a harbor porpoise and a harp seal. We are currently working on a long-finned pilot whale.
Recently a rare 10-foot-long pygmy sperm whale washed ashore on Dyer’s Island, Vinalhaven. The necropsy showed that this whale was carrying a 13-pound calf, a perfectly formed little whale 32 inches long. It had delicate little flukes and a fine dorsal fin. It also seemed to have vestigial nostrils pointing back into its ancestry to an evolutionary time when these mammals had not yet breathed through a blowhole.
It’s always sad — especially so with a mother-to-be –to see the life of one of these mysterious animals come to an end. We are often left wondering about the cause. The necropsy revealed that she died from having swallowed an ordinary green plastic trash bag. The indigestible plastic had gathered into a wad in her stomach, forming a barrier that prevented food from moving through to be digested. Perhaps the plastic bag had waste food in it and was thrown into the ocean. It was knotted at its top. It’s likely that its shape or texture, as perceived by the visual or echolocating sense of the whale, just looked like prey.
As we handle the bones of some of these great animals, we begin to understand more about them. We are made more mindful that human carelessness could set a trap for another animal out there.
Terry Goodhue of the Mid-Coast School of Technology is a Vocational Arts Instructor at the North Haven Community School.
