I want that one...

I first heard that a 27m Blue Whale had been washed up on a beach some 6 weeks ago. I'd show my students pictures of the beast in as many lessons as I could tenuously link it to and I was desperate to see it whole. Sadly, we came across the remnants of the whale - a mound of putrid skin and blubber after smelling it some way off. We then scratched around a bit and found shards of bones, broken on the rocks before suddenly seeing a spine instead of what we thought at first was a small tree!

Although it is nothing like seeing the whole animal, too see some of its huge components first-hand was mind-blowing!

Although very rotten, the spine was impossible to flex much... its weight was surprising despite its size... how do they swim?!

It is crazy to think that it's spinal cord fitted through that whole...

Merry Christmas! The Department of Conservation had kindly informed me (I pester them too!) that this Whale was not the property of the local Maori people - purely because of the beach it landed on. That meant that all bones were available for the public to take so this beautiful specimen yelled "Take me HOME!" when we found it! We tried to lift it and nearly broke our backs!
I also found a huge rib bone so we hid them in the vegetation above the beach and tried to plan their extrication. The beach we found these on is only a 4km walk from the farm. However, the beach has lots of limestone rocks to climb over as well as sandy beach - 2km in all. There was then a formidable 80m cliff to climb up - it is hard walking up it normally! Then, the next 2km is over rolling hills and fences with rocks, mud and sheep everywhere!

We tried gaining access to the beach by another farm which borders the beach directly. Sadly, other people who asked similar permission left fences open so we were not welcome to obtain our bones by this beautifully simple means... what to do?!