Amazing Up Close Photographs of a Whale

May 06, 2008

Today at Discovery News you can read about a pygmy right whale that's undergoing a dissection at The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. If that museum name sounds familiar, it's because just last week, a rare colossal squid was examined at the very same spot. The squid is now in the same room with the whale! Staff are still preparing an exhibit tank for the squid, which is covered up (sort of like a dead human body at a morgue) and lying right next to the 6 1/2-feet-long infant whale. To have such two ocean giants in the same location, much less the same room, is virtually unprecedented.

Jane Keig at the museum provided some fantastic images of the whale, which I'd like to share with you here.

The whale's mouth and chin

Get a load of all of these still food-encrusted baleen plates.

Drs. Joy Reidenberg and Anton van Helden examine the whale. Note all of the gash marks on the whale's skin. Most of those were caused by one or more cookie cutter sharks.

And here's the shot that ran with our story: Drs. Catherine Kemper and Sentiel Rommel preparing the whale to go under the knife.