Digging up bones: Royal Ontario Museum moves to next stage of blue whale project

The Royal Ontario Museum hasmoved to the next phase of its plan to make sure that two bluewhales killed by sea ice in this province in 2014 will have a second life as research tools.

This week, crews started removing the massive mammalbones from acomposting manure where they have been kept for two years to clean them.

"The bacterial action will help get rid of theremnantsof the flesh," saidJacqueline Miller, a mammology technician at the ROM.

• Heart of blue whale beached in Rocky Harbour being dissected, preserved
• Blue whale bones buried in manure for cleaning
• ROM reassessing costly plans to handle 2 blue whale carcasses

In the winter of 2014 heavy sea ice off the west coast of Newfoundlandkilled as many as nine of the world's largest animals.

Two of them washed up on shores in western Newfoundland, one in Rocky Harbour,the otherin Trout River.

As the carcasses of the giant sea creatures started to decompose, and with the bodiesexpandingfrom methane gas,something had to be done.

The Royal Ontario Museum stepped in and offered to clean up the mess in the name of science.

Miller was part of the team the ROMsent to this province to cleanse the two blue whales, keeping one for itself with Memorial University claiming the other.

Despite extensivecleaning on site back in 2014, the bonesneeded to be buried in large containers at Research Casting International in Trenton, Ontarioto help further remove oils and blubber.

"We're getting them out individually," Miller told CBC'sOn The Go."Doing some measurements on them, including weight, and sorting them out."

Miller said it will take about a week to get the bones organized before moving on to the next phase.

"We have to continue removing the lipid because leaving a lot of fat in the bones it's going to leech out over time and if we are mounting this as real specimen we don'twant that to be happening.It's going to be going into, basically, a chemical bath, a detergent bath. A green detergent, nothing that is noxious or toxic."

Two large bathtubs are being set up at the site in Ontario to make this happen, a heated bathingprocess that shouldtake several months.

The ROMhas set a target dateof March 2017 to havethe bones of the blue whale on displayin Toronto.

Two years underground may have helped remove some blubber and oil butit still couldn't get rid of the smell.

"A very strong aroma but a very different one from the aroma in Newfoundland," Miller said.

"This is a very strong manure smell, so it would be very much like a barn but with a fishy overtone to it."