What's the Story in Tobermory?*

The story is that the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust (HWDT) on the Isle of Mull in Scotland is currently looking for volunteers to help with the preparation of a harbor porpoise skeleton to be used for school visits. If you have ever wanted to spend three weeks in Scotland and learn about cetacean anatomy, this is a great opportunity.

According to the HWDT site, this project would involve:
-Handling bones
-Removing dead tissue
-Soaking bones in liquid and household chemicals (such as laundry powder)
-Drying out the bones
-Numbering, cataloguing and assembling the skeleton

The Isle of Mull is one of the western islands of Scotland, and is the second largest in the Inner Hebrides. I spent a snowy two days on Mull two years ago while on an internship in Edinburgh. Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull, is home to about 700 people, a whisky distillery, and a very colorful waterfront (see above). Oh, and there's some great cheese coming out of Mull as well, which you may be able to find at your local supermarket. (For example, New Seasons on NE 33rd Street in Portland, Oregon carries it from time to time.)

If this sounds like your cup of tea -- and Scotland has some great tea -- you should think about applying. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I want to skip on over to Scotland for a bit. I'll bet they're looking for someone sooner than I could be available though, so I'm putting it out there for you. What are you waiting for?!

*The title of this post comes from a children's show called Balamory, in which children sing, "What's the story in Balamory? Wouldn't you like to know!" Balamory is based on the burgh of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, which is apparent from the beginning of the show.

A Trip to NOAA

Top of an orca skull viewed upside-down.

Last week, on a work-related trip, I got to see inside NOAA's National Marine Mammal Labs (NMML) in Seattle with resident researcher Jim Thomason as the wonderful tour guide.

The first areas Jim showed me were the tooth lab, scat lab (which smelled delicious), and collections of otoliths (fish ears) and cephalopod (octopus and squid) beaks from the scat of northern fur seals.

From there we went to the osteological collection and looked at a juvenile gray whale confiscated from a Hood Canal resident who didn't have permits. The next room was full of orca skulls, ribs as tall as Arvydas Sabonis -- who is 7'3" -- beaked whale skulls, and other cetacean miscellany. Many of the orca skulls were from the orcas captured in Puget Sound in the 1960s and 70s. Wow, there's some orca history to never forget.

Most of the shelves on the left held orca skulls.

Once I got over my fascination of the shelves of orca skulls, I saw a skull from one of my favorite whales -- a male strap toothed whale! These whales are so cool; the males have these two teeth -- almost two and a half inches in width -- that grow over their rostrum in old age, limiting the amount they can open their mouths. As a result, these whales have learned to use suction to get at their food.

Mandible of a strap-toothed whale.

On the other side of the collection we looked at skulls of polar bears, walrus, and crabeater seals -- which have these amazing plankton-sifting, prehistoric-looking teeth.

Wouldn't you love to have some teeth like these?

All in all it was a great trip to a place I never thought I would see. If you had told a 10-year-old me that I would one day see such a collection, I'm fairly certain I would have dropped dead on the spot. Jim was a fantastic tour guide, and I hope to be able to visit again.

No Bones About It!

In my last post I mentioned that I was preparing to work with Lee Post, aka "The Boneman." This is all in relation to my job as an AmeriCorps environmental educator at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. It has been an amazing experience so far and I can't wait to see how the rest of the week turns out!

The last two days have been spent training volunteers to measure and photograph bones from our gray whale skeleton, which is used as a teaching tool, instead of being fully articulated as an exhibit. The trainings are all in preparation for an even bigger project at the marine science center -- the articulation and exhibition of a transient orca skeleton -- and I am so grateful that I get to be here in this time and place to be involved with this hands-on project.

Cervical vertebra from a juvenile gray whale. Photo taken on my camera phone of the experimental photography set-up.

Ever since working as an educator at The Whale Museum on San Juan Island, I had wondered what it would be like to articulate a whale skeleton. I read Lee Post's books on articulation, but never dreamed I would get to do any articulating myself. And now, some years later, I'm preparing to do exactly that; I'm training volunteers and learning about articulation from Lee Post himself!