Move over big squid – there’s competition at Te Papa for the most popular exhibit these holidays !
You love the blue whale heart in NatureSpace, including crawling into it, stuffing things inside it (like big toy penguins) and having your picture taken with it.
The model was a highlight of the Whales | Tohorā exhibition. It was so popular we made two of them! The other heart model is now on tour with the exhibition, which closed at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC on 18 Jan 2009 and will open on 28 February at Exploration Place, in Kansas.
The blue whale heart is a favourite Te Papa photo spot and it’s great to see your pics up on Flickr.
If you’ve got photos of you and your mates with the blue whale heart we’d love to see them!
ARLs 3D glasses © Copyright Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2008
Today the Exhibition team got our first taste of what our 3D Colossal Squid movie is going to look like. The exhibition opens in December and it will include Te Papa’s first 3D movie!
The production company Animation Research Ltd (ARL) sent us the latest cut of the movie and special 3D viewing glasses. Don’t worry we’ll have normal 3D glasses in the exhibition.
We all took turns to watch using the glasses – that’s Judy our Project Co-coordinator in the photo. Wow. It’s amazing to see the Colossal Squid and a whole lot of other deep sea fish literally come to life in front of you.
You might just be able to make out that the movie is still two separate images side-by-side. Each eye looks at one picture when you use the glasses. Your brain then recompiles them in to a single 3D image. When ARL have finished you’ll see a single image projected onto a screen and use normal 3D glasses.
Judy looking at the movie on her PC © Copyright Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2008
We’re pretty excited about this part of the exhibition. The goal is to give you an idea of what the Squid’s life and environment might be like. We have to saymight because until someone films one down in the deep sea we really won’t know for sure.
It has meant there have been some interesting conversations. How does it swim – cockatoo position or with arms straight out in front? How does the beak move when it’s eating? When would it use its light organs, or headlights when hunting?
We’ve been working with ARL for the last 2 months on this 3D movie. ARLis an amazing company in Dunedin who we worked with on the Whales/Tohora exhibition. They created the amazing Sperm Whale versus Giant Squid video.
Not long ‘til the exhibition opens – Dec 13th - and our girl goes on display. We’ll also have a new Squid website. It’ll have lots of the cool exhibition stuff including a version of the movie for those of you who can’t make it into the building. It’ll be a 2D version ‘cos as far as I know you can’t get 3D on the web – or can you?
Lucy Hoffman
This was the same day Chile announced that its waters are now a whale sanctuary - that’s 5,500km of coastal waters protected from whale hunting for commercial or scientific purposes. A good day for ceteceans!
See Fox News’ coverage of the Whales exhibition here:http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=15D5F1DA273ECCB7F7EFD061556BEB9E?contentId=7653443&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1.
I hope to get some images up soon of the ceremony so stay tuned!
So I’m at my desk when my cell rings – its Anton (you know – our Collection Manager Marine Mammals)…
“Do you wanna see a dead whale?”
Of course! So off I trot (nice and quicksmart in time with whatever’s playing on my MP3) – not even worrying about what the Wellington wind was doing to my hair… you can’t turn your nose up to this kind of opportunity!
Anton pointing down to the washed up dead whale.
And there it was – I wasn’t too sure what I was expecting but this poor creature had been dead at least a couple of days, so it wasn’t in the best shape. It had been battered around by waves, dashed against rocks, pecked and chewed by various creatures.
My first view of the dead Pygmy Sperm whale
Two things I have learnt about a Pygmy sperm whale – notice three-quarters of the way towards its tail there’s discolouring in the water – I thought it was blood… its ink! We think they squirt ink out much like a squid does to confuse and escape from predators.
The other thing (although it has decomposed so much you couldn’t see it) is that these whales have markings just behind their heads that imitate gills. So, from a distance they could be mistaken for great white sharks.
The sneaky camouflage whale!
Measuring
By this time critical mass of onlookers had been achieved so passers by were now stopping to see what the go was. Of course nobody had been interested when it was just Anton and myself 
All those people walked on by who missed this opportunity… hence the blog! Too exciting and interesting not to share!
On Sunday evening 11 May 2008 Te Papa closed Whales|Tohorā. Over 140,000 people had visited the exhibition.
During the morning several killer whales, or orca, played by the fountain in Oriental Bay – much to the delight and amazement of several of the Whales exhibition team members. We like to think it was a sign!
For Te Papa staff and iwi partners who had contributed to the exhibition the closing was a sad and moving event. We gave the exhibition a poroporoaki (farewell) and blessed the taonga in preparation for the tour to the first international venue in Washington DC.
We reflected on what had been achieved and the impact we believe the exhibition has had on so many people. The exhibition’s whakatauki, or proverb, sums it up:
Tere tohorā, tere tangata.
Where whales journey, people follow.
This week Te Papa staff start taking down the exhibition and getting it packed up and ready to travel to the United States. It will open later this year at theNational Geographic Museum in Washington D.C.
The whale has now been completed dissected and the organs such as intestine, kidneys and heart, are being preserved in a formalin solution. the bones are being flensed (stripped of muscle). The stomach content revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Dr Joy Reidenberg is now in the process of investigating respiratory tract. Above you can see the lungs and Dr Reidenberg is holding up the laryngeal sac which is different to other animals in that it sits off to the side instead in the middle.
9 May 2008
Viscera revealed
Posted by janekeig under Pygmy right whale, Whales | Tohorā | Tags:anatomy, Pygmy right whale, viscera |[3] Comments
This morning the internal organs were individually explored. The blood vessels near the heart showed that this whale successfully changed from an intra uterine to extra uterine life (technically, the ductus arteriosus was closed).
The ductus arteriosus is a blood vessel that circulates oxygenated blood received from the mother whale while the baby whale is in the uterus. When the baby whale is born, the lungs take over this function and the ductus arteriosus gradually closes and becomes a part of the ligature.
This morning the internal organs will be removed and preserved in jars for later study.
I am assured that this will reduce the smell – I have a pretty good stomach for this kind of thing but whale guts smell bad!
You can see part of the jaw being removed in the above picture and below is the view looking from the body up to the head.
The large white mass in the near the top of the skull is tympanic bulla (the ear bone).
You can see the heart in the lower right hand side corner with arteries coming out of it – they look like collapsed sausages.
Above is a picture of the Pygmy right whale lung, it’s about 45cm long when stretched out like it is below. The lungs sit under the backbone of the whale and isn’t divided into lobes like human lungs are.
The scientists told me that they think it’s smaller than usual in a whale of this size.
The heart is in perfect shape – it actually looked like a Valentine’s heart especially when it was lifted out – see below.
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