Scientists, artists restore giant blue whale skeleton: UBC museum to display suspended 26-m specimen
Sculptors, technicians, students and scientists are working overtime in Victoria to repair and reassemble 500 broken bones that made up one of the largest creatures on earth — a blue whale.
It’s been a yearlong project to restore the skeleton of the massive beast that washed up on Prince Edward Island in 1987.
The skeleton, when complete, will be going to the University of B.C.’s new Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver.
One of the final tasks in the project is to finish the giant head, which had shattered into 25 larger pieces and about 40 fragments.
“We replicated it in fibreglass and foam and have now coated it with a durable, lightweight layer of plasti-paste,” said artist David Hunwick, while stirring the mucky mix with a trowel.
Hunwick teaches sculpture at the Victoria College of Art and is being assisted on the skeleton project by students.
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