Skeleton of fin whale that washed ashore in Anchorage will go to Wasilla museum

Yahoo

15-03-2025

Mar. 15—The 47-foot fin whale that washed up on the Anchorage mudflats in November, drawing hundreds of visitors and becoming a citywide phenomenon, has found a permanent home at a Wasilla museum.
Remains of the whale — withered by time, but still recognizable — have been frozen into the tidal flats off West Anchorage since the creature first came in on a high tide in November, surviving tides, vandals and periods of unusually warm weather. The whale has now been on the mudflats for four months.
A tissue necropsy has not yet yielded a cause of death for the juvenile female animal, said Jennifer Angelo, a public affairs officer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska office. Scientists are still taking samples from the whale and reviewing test results, and it's possible further examination could provide new answers, Angelo said.
NOAA has asked the public to stay away from the carcass.
"Marine mammals can transmit disease to humans and pets, and high tides and quicksand-like mud in the area can pose potential dangers," Angelo said.
The Museum of Alaska in Wasilla, formerly known as the Alaska Museum of Transportation and Industry, plans to take possession of whale's skeleton for use in an eventual educational display, said the museum's curator and chief executive, James Grogan.
NOAA is working with the museum on a request for an authorization under the Marine Mammal Protection Act that would allow the organization to collect and display the fin whale bones for educational purposes, Angelo said.
Grogan said he is a former Air Force pilot and high school science teacher with "zero experience" with whales, but learned that other institutions had not expressed interest in taking on the whale skeleton and thought his museum — basically a one-man operation open seasonally and run on a shoestring budget — could.
"I came up with the idea of, what if we harvested it, processed it to use it for education and to promote whaling and oceans in Alaska," Grogan said in a phone interview.
The museum sits on 40 acres of land in Wasilla with a collection that includes helicopters, commercial fishing boats, train cars and tractors, among other exhibits. It has only been open in the summer in the past, but this year has been open for most of winter as well.
The museum has never had anything like a whale, Grogan said. But he hopes it will become the beginning of a natural history exhibition that could draw more students.
The plan, Grogan said, is to go out to the mudflats late in March on a low-tide day, catalog the parts with biologists and then — with a crew of volunteers — take the whale apart, removing the bones for the future articulated skeleton display and leaving the remaining blubber and tissue to go out to sea. The whale bones will be pulled with plastic sleds up to the coastal trail and onto trucks, where they will be taken to Wasilla and readied for display.
"We have to catalog every single, you know, left rib, right rib, left vertebrae, right vertebrae," he said.
He said he's reached out to various zoos and wildlife facilities and no one has shown interest in taking the meat — by now quite old.
It may take a year or more, he said, but the goal is to have the fin whale Southcentral Alaska came to know so well displayed for the public to see. Grogan said he's consulting with Alaska Native experts about the cultural significance of the whale as well as the biology and best way to process the animal, and working with biologists who are still trying to unlock the secrets of what killed the animal and drew it far off its normal course, to Anchorage's muddy shoreline.
"I want to make sure we do it right," he said.