In the early morning of February 14, 2016, the temperature dropped to minus zero on the beach in Changsha Town, Rudong County, Jiangsu Province. Local residents noticed a hill on the turbid beach, and when they looked closer, it was a stranded sperm whale. Subsequently, another stranded sperm whale was found not far away.
Sperm whales stranded on the beach in Rudong County | Fruit Shell Network / Youtube
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the problem of stranded whales</h1>
Whale stranding is not a rare natural phenomenon, and records about it run through the history of the ocean. In November 1611, the passengers on the Mayflower saw a large number of whales off the coast of today's Massachusetts, but the close-by whales did not spark any poetry celebrating nature, and the colonists lamented that they lacked whaling and refining tools, and missed an opportunity to make a fortune. Soon, however, they were pleasantly surprised to find that New England was a paradise for whales— right whales, sperm whales, pilot whales swam in groups in the sea, and often dead or alive whales wandered the beach.
The whaling industry in New England was once very prosperous | Currier & Ives / Wikimedia Commons
More and more "sea catchers" were attracted by the wealth of the sky, and gradually, some people who were not satisfied with relying on the sky for food began to unite to establish whaling fleets and enterprises, which opened the prelude to the history of whaling in North America (and also the history of regional species extinction).
现代捕鲸业 | Australian Customs and Border Protection Service / Wikimedia Commons
The motive for this suicide has been speculated since the first sight of a whale stranding, but until now, the secret of the whale stranding has been poorly understood. Stranded whales may be sick or injured, or their navigation systems may be disturbed by magnetic fields or sonar, or they may be trapped by a labyrinth of shallow hydrological conditions. Another situation is even worse: some of the more social whales (such as pilot whales) may be reluctant to leave individual members who have been stranded, eventually leading to a large-scale stranding of the entire whale population.
Stranded sperm whales | Richard Humphrey / Geograph.com.uk
In general, it is relatively easy to rescue stranded small whales, and once large whales run aground, the fate is often very dangerous. From the moment it leaves the water, the whale's unsupported body is gradually collapsing, and the huge surface area is difficult to retain water in time, even if it is forcibly transported, the lifting machinery is difficult to operate on the beach. And large animals are always dangerous—both alive and dead.
Getting stranded whales back into the sea is a difficult task| eddieg28sp / Youtube
On January 24, 2004, a 17-meter-long male sperm whale was swept off the coast of Yunlin County, Taiwan Province. After several days of in situ fermentation, the degree of decay of the whale carcass has been considerable. In the early morning of the 26th, when the body weighing about 50 tons was transported through the center of Tainan, it suddenly exploded in situ, spilling corrupt blood and internal organs everywhere, and the street shop vehicles and onlookers suffered one after another. The explosive scene was recorded on video and still circulates on the Internet.
Afterwards, the sperm whale (the rest of it) continued its journey and was made into a skeleton specimen and exhibited at the Taijiang Whale and Dolphin Museum.
Whale Carcass Bomb | On Demand News / Youtube
This gruesome, slightly comical scene confirms the risks that a giant corpse can pose, and the biosecurity problems that come with a long process of corruption, often require people to think ahead about the aftermath of stranded whales before they die. Poisons, guns and even explosives have been used to humanely dispose of stranded whales that are now lifeless but are still surviving, but unfortunately there is no way to euthanize stranded whales with dignity and speed.
Autopsies of stranded whales | USACE NY / Flickr
We have no way of knowing at what point the two sperm whales stranded in Rudong came to the end of their lives, only that they were powerless to return to the sky when they were discovered. In order to commemorate them, people named them "Yangyang" and "Rustling" respectively. Among them, the Yangyang is 14.88 meters long and weighs 40 tons, the mandible is 4.3 meters long, and the tail fin is 3.85 meters wide, which is an adult male whale with a standard physique, compared with the female sperm whale is much smaller, generally about 12 meters long and weighs about 15 tons.
Sperm whale swarm | Will Falcon / Wikimedia Commons
Sperm whales are the largest surviving toothed whale creatures in the world, and their main range of activity is the deep ocean of the twilight zone (generally referring to the depth from 200 meters to 1,000 meters deep), which is widely distributed, numerous but mysterious, and is an important part of the vertical energy flow of marine ecosystems.
Mysterious behemoths in the deep sea | Gabriel Barathieu / flickr
Compared with the sperm whale that exploded in the street of Tainan City, the "Yangyang" was in much better condition when it was found, leaving people with plenty of choice. After many investigations, it was finally decided to make it into a plasticized specimen in Dalian, and at the same time, "Rusta" was made into a stripped specimen, and the skin and bones were exhibited separately.
Specimen of sperm whale skeleton preserved at the Lee Quang Chie Museum of Nature, Singapore | budak / Flickr
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the world's largest plasticized specimen</h1>
Bioplasticization is a specimen making technique invented in the 1970s. At the Ontario Museum in Canada, there is a specimen of the heart of a blue whale weighing about 200 kilograms, which once became the treasure of the Ontario Museum due to the scarcity of large-size whale plastic specimens.
The Blue Whale Heart | on display at the Ontario Museum CityNews Toronto / Youtube
Bioplasticization needs to be completed in four steps: first of all, it is fixed, and the tissue is prevented from decomposing and fixing the shape with a chemical agent (usually formaldehyde); then it is dehydrated; then it is gradually replaced by silicone rubber, polyester or epoxy resin in a low-temperature vacuum negative pressure environment; and finally the specimen is hardened by chemical agents, heat or ultraviolet rays.
Details of sperm whale plasticized specimens | vb/species calendar
In other words, it is necessary to replace the original biological macromolecules in the tissues and organs of the sperm whale in situ with "plastic" in order to preserve the shape of the whale body and show the internal structural characteristics such as internal organs and muscles, which are somewhat similar to fossil formation and can theoretically be preserved indefinitely. It's just that in the process of fossil formation, it is mineral filling that replaces biological tissue, and it takes a longer time.
Plasticized sperm whale bones and internal organs | vb/species calendar
At first glance, it seems quite simple, like "putting an elephant in the refrigerator in three steps", but the technical team wants to complete the world's largest bioplastic specimen, which is not a handmade product that can be completed in a soaking tank. In order to prevent the "whale explosion", the production team first vented the whale carcass, then took out ten tons of internal organs and infused formalin. Next, the 40-ton "Yangyang" was transported to Dalian, which was decomposed into almost 600 pieces, of which more than 120 bones and more than 300 muscles were cleaned and fixed, and finally reassembled and integrated. 360 tons of deacetone, 40 tons of silicone, 5 tons of steel, and 138 kilograms of scalpel blades were used throughout the production process.
On May 30, 2020, a fully plasticized specimen of the sperm whale, which took four years to produce, was finally exhibited in Dalian. Nine months later (that is, recently), "Yangyang" will return to the place where it was found, Rudong, for a long time.
Herman Melville extolls countless times in Moby Dick for its beauty and its destructive power. In the long years of wrestling with the sea, sperm whales have left countless stories and strange stories to whalers who have escaped death, weathered sailors, and even those who have witnessed the remains of sperm whales have fallen for this elegant creature. And the sperm whale that lies quietly in the museum is enough to provide a wonderful commentary on our marine culture, telling us what kind of legend is swimming in the ocean.
Sperm whales have become part of human marine culture | NOAA / Flickr
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