Cleaning a whale
The Whale Hall at Bergen Museum is on a unique scale, even by international standards.
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The hall, with its 22 whale skeletons suspended from the ceiling, opened for the international Exhibition of Fishing in Bergen in 1865. Now it is the focus of an international team led by Briton Gordon Turner-Walker, who are cleaning the skeletons for the first time in more than a hundred years.
The exhibit is protected by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, which is one of the reasons why the skeletons must be cleaned where they hang. The skeletons, some of which weigh several tonnes, still excrete oil, and this has attracted an enormous amount of dust and other pollutants. The skeletons are extremely valuable, not only in terms of science history and as museum exhibits, but also as a source of genetic material for researchers.
The whale cleaning project will last for two years. In the meantime, you can follow their restoration on the internet: thewhaleboneblog.blogspot.com.
