[HN Gopher] Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozi...
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Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil
Author : geox
Score : 122 points
Date : 2024-10-17 23:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wpri.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wpri.com)
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| Highly recommend the museum in New Bedford !
| firefoxd wrote:
| You have to see those whales skeletons in person to understand
| their sheer size. And if you want to know more than you need to
| about whales, pick up a copy of Moby Dick. Don't be intimidated
| by the size. I still can't believe this book was written in the
| 1800s. Catching a whale was akin to striking oil.
| stefanka wrote:
| > Catching a whale was akin to striking oil.
|
| Quite literally, apparently.
| gurjeet wrote:
| > to understand their sheer size
|
| In the linked article, towards the middle, the photo shows 2
| people reading the plaque next to a pink structure, which
| appears to be that of a whale's heart. That, combined with the
| skeleton hanging over them, should give us an idea that we are
| no bigger to these whales, than probably an average snail is to
| us (between 5 cm and 9 cm).
| dmd wrote:
| The average snail is 2-5 cm, not 5-9 cm. Just sayin.
| ygra wrote:
| Perhaps they meant slugs. In German at least, both are
| called Schnecken (just one is naked), so perhaps that
| persists in other languages as well.
| card_zero wrote:
| I'm guessing much, much smaller than that, taking
| microsnails into account.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-the-worlds-
| tinie...
|
| But let me just add up their lengths, along with the
| lengths of all giant african land snails and all other
| snails, and divide by the total number of snails in the
| world ... is there a statistical trick that could answer
| this, like the one for counting undiscovered species?
| Probably not.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| Also, In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship
| Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. It is a non-fiction account of
| the wreck of the Essex, a Nantucket whaler, that was
| inexplicably "stove by a whale", and lost at sea - an unheard
| of occurrence at the time. The crew was forced to survive in
| open boats for weeks, and resorted to cannibalism.
|
| This was the story that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick.
|
| The book is both a survival story and an investigation of the
| Nantucket whaling industry and whaling in general, as well as
| the social and economic background.
| drittich wrote:
| Thanks, sounds amazing! I've checked it out from local
| library.
| Blahah wrote:
| The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky
| (book/audiobook) is excellent on this topic. The Basque,
| according to current evidence, invented whaling, and were
| culturally central to its interweaving with human history. The
| book tells the tale with rigour and flare.
| RobinL wrote:
| The whaling industry as depicted in Moby Dick is pretty high on
| my list of the most unbelievable things that really happened.
| Particularly the range of the boats and the method of catching
| the whales. Up there with the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs
| and how the East India company managed to dominate the entire
| country in terms of sheer implausibility.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I would say the Ice trade was crazier.
|
| And if your rulers are bloodthirsty heart burners and skin
| flayers, even satan will be received warmly. I mean
| Huitzilopochtli is giving Kali run for her money in the
| deities I don't to live under competition.
|
| And east india - you replace the elite and the people
| underneath will continue following orders - the same happened
| with the Manchu conquering of china.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Here's the life-size blue whale sculpture outside the National
| Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
|
| Note the size of the people.
|
| https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/10/e1/e9/42/...
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I recall hearing how the demand for whale oil fell off a cliff
| not long after electricity was scaled for lighting.
|
| Interesting in that now we're looking to move away from
| hydrocarbons which ultimately was how much of the electricity has
| been produced.
| worldvoyageur wrote:
| Crude oil saved the whales from extinction.
|
| Kerosene, refined from crude oil, was at least as good as whale
| oil for lamps. It was also cheaper, so that was the end of the
| whaling industry. There were pathetic advertisements from the
| whale oil people of that time arguing for 'pure' whale oil over
| 'impure' substitutes. However kerosene was so obviously a
| better deal consumers switched with lightning speed anyway.
|
| As an aside, gasoline was a waste product of the crude oil
| refining process that produced kerosene. That meant very cheap
| fuel for the internal combustion engine which was starting its
| climb up the technology s-curve at the same time.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" There were pathetic advertisements from the whale oil
| people of that time arguing for 'pure' whale oil over
| 'impure' substitutes."_
|
| It's the same today: people pay premiums for vegetables
| fertilized with "pure" bird poop (guano) over equivalent
| phosphate rocks mined from the earth.
|
| e.g.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/americas/30peru.htm.
| ..
| adonovan wrote:
| Nonetheless whale oil remained very useful as a low
| temperature machine lubricating oil, and its use for that
| purpose increased so much that by the 1960s sperm whale
| catches were at their all-time highest, before abruptly
| falling with the rise of the environmental movement.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| It wasn't quite immediate - margarine was invented to fill the
| gap on the demand side, and kept the industry going for quite a
| few decades.
|
| What killed off whaling was that they killed off the whales -
| it simply wasn't economically viable to send ships out any
| more.
| qrush wrote:
| One of the best museums in MA. My kids love this place - there's
| a model whale heart to climb through, a scale replica whaling
| vessel fully rigged, real samples of whale oil to smell, plenty
| of harpoons, and a lot of art from the era.
|
| New Bedford is really one of the hidden gems of this state - I'm
| really glad South Coast Rail will be connecting it back to Boston
| after decades of being ignored. Worth a visit.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| A great many of the paintings in their art collection are by
| Clifford Ashley of ABOK fame. Besides being a knot collector,
| he was an accomplished artist.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Having repeatedly almost killed myself from slipping on a small
| drop of oil on my kitchen floor in socks, this makes me feel like
| a nervous grandmother.
| chriscjcj wrote:
| Not sure how this particular whale met its demise, but I'm
| guessing it probably should have been taking a statin.
| buttercraft wrote:
| "The whale was discovered wrapped around the bow of a tanker
| that had accidentally killed him back in 1998. KOBO's carcass
| was eventually towed to shore and dissected for research and
| educational purposes."
| sseagull wrote:
| Chemist pet peeve:
|
| "The oil catcher consists of a series of tubes that start at the
| tip of KOBO's rostrum and funnel down into a beaker."
|
| That's an Erlenmeyer flask, not a beaker. The quote gets it right
| in the next sentence. Just sayin' :)
| pwg wrote:
| A prime example of thee "Gell-Mann Amnesia" effect:
|
| https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
| ffujdefvjg wrote:
| NBWM is absolutely fantastic. They have Clifford Ashley's (wrote
| Ashley Book of Knots) rope and knot collection, and some of his
| paintings too (he lived on the other side of the harbour). They
| also have the world's largest scrimshaw collection, and the
| Lagoda, the world's largest model wooden ship (1:2 scale IIRC),
| which you can walk around on and check out the ropework. Seamen's
| Bethel from Moby Dick is literally a block away. Easily the
| coolest museum I've been to.
|
| Interesting bit of trivia, New Bedford used to be the richest
| city in the planet because of the whaling industry.
| chx wrote:
| The typical claim made is "it was the wealthiest city per
| capita in North America in the first half of the 19th century"
| but on p23 https://npshistory.com/publications/nebe/clr.pdf
| claims it was the second in the state. New Orleans is claimed
| to be the nation's wealthiest in 1830s-1840s.
| dmix wrote:
| 24yrs if anyone is too lazy to read
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| If we woke up one day to discover that the skeleton was
| mercilessly destroyed, I think we already have our suspect :p
|
| All jokes aside, this got me curious to look for the definition
| of "oil", a word used to describe stuff extracted from plants,
| rocks and, apparently, animals too.
|
| It turns out that for a liquid to be classified as oil, according
| to Merriam Webster, it needs to be "flammable", "not dissolve in
| water" and "greasy".
|
| What's greasy, you ask? Well, it's smeared in... "oily matter".
| kijin wrote:
| "Oil" used to mean olive oil and nothing else.
|
| Its usage gradually expanded to include other vegetable fats,
| liquid animal fats such as whale oil, and finally mineral oil
| when it was discovered.
|
| People back then weren't particularly interested in the
| chemical compositions of the different oils, only that they
| felt similar and served similar purposes.
|
| Meanwhile, animal fats that are solid at room temperature, such
| as butter and lard, were never really called "oil" despite
| being much closer to other edible fats than anything we dug up
| from a desert.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I thought whale oil was what you get when you boil the fatty
| tissue of the whale. Why would the skeleton have any oil in it?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I'm sorry whoever I offended enough to downvote this. I didn't
| realize whale skeletons were a touchy subject. I'm not an
| American so I don't know.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Great article.
|
| _Awful website._
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Ok I'm going to come out and say it because I think multiple
| people in this thread have hinted at the same confusion: What
| bloody kind of oil are we talking about here? Whale oil, that
| somehow was captured in the bones? Petroleum oil from the whale's
| encounter with the tanker? They basically buried the lede on this
| story and nowhere appear to explain why this particular whale is
| dripping some kind of "oil" that seemingly other museum example
| don't experience. So - anyone got any insight here?
| mattkrause wrote:
| It sounds like it's whale oil because:
|
| - it's coming from the bone marrow
|
| - it has a reddish tint
|
| - the curator says the smell is reminiscent of a whaling ship
| and not, say, a machine shop or oil rig.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I think you are probably right, but then the natural question
| becomes - why? As in, is there something unique to this
| specimen and it's display? If I drive over to the aquarium in
| my state and examine the whale display, would it also drip?
| ekelsen wrote:
| Probably not -- very few whale skeletons on display are
| from recently deceased whales. Just a random lookup -- the
| one in the London Natural History Museum is from 1891.
| Seems likely that when it was new it also leaked some oil?
| ricardo81 wrote:
| If it burns, it burns. I'd guess that's the prehistory of it.
| The scientific method was barely much older than whale oil
| usage as far as I can tell.
| furyofantares wrote:
| It's a mixture of fats. Think olive oil, fish oil, the oils
| your skin excretes.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| That could be - but my point is the article doesn't make it
| clear what kind of oil we're talking about, and as you note -
| the oil would come from the fats, so why is it excreting from
| the bones? IE: wouldn't all the potential oil have been
| removed when they prepared this specimen for display?
| pvaldes wrote:
| My bet is that largest bones here are just too big and find
| some recipient where to cook them was impossible.
|
| But both whale fat and petrol oil are possible here. Maybe
| the whale died by a black tide and was floating some time
| before to be scooped by the ship. Fin whales type are fast
| cetaceans and crashing with a ship is not so usual like in
| other cetaceans. Not unless is an ill animal.
| krisoft wrote:
| > my point is the article doesn't make it clear what kind
| of oil we're talking about,
|
| The article clearly explains that it is oil form the bone
| marrow of the animal. Quoting the relevant part:
|
| "Rocha explained that KOBO's bone marrow is actually 'full
| of oil,' even though the whale has been dead for more than
| two decades.
|
| 'It's seeping out through the pores of the bones,' Rocha
| said. 'The outer edges of the bone are a little more porous
| than human bones and [gravity is] just pulling the oil
| out.'"
| poopsmithe wrote:
| [1] "Typically, when a fresh whale specimen is collected,
| preparators will attempt to remove as much of this oil as
| possible. But even then, they cannot get all of it out of the
| bones."
|
| [2] "The marrow is oily and the oil is a source of energy for
| these animals. Especially the baleen whales, who typically have
| a period of the year where they don't feed," Robert Rocha, the
| New Bedford Whaling Museum's Associate Curator of Science and
| Research, tells Popular Science. "There's energy stored in the
| muscles and in the blubber, but the energy stored in the oil
| and the bones is a reserve energy source for them."
|
| [3] "Their bones contain a lot of oil. In life this substance
| is critical for the animals to maintain buoyancy in water and
| was the reason why so many were slaughtered during the
| eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But it can cause major
| issues when trying to preserve their remains in collections."
|
| [1] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/whale-oil-and-half-an-inch-
| of...
|
| [2] https://www.popsci.com/science/blue-whale-leaking-oil/
|
| [3] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/whale-oil-and-half-an-inch-
| of...
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Nice work - this is the kind of background and insight I
| would have expected from the journalist.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It's rather obvious that it's whale oil, _given that whales
| used to be hunted for their oil._ I don 't know how you could
| even assume that a whale skeleton would drip petroleum.
|
| Funny anecdote: The automatic transmission used to be
| lubricated with whale oil because it (whale oil) could handle
| higher temperatures than petroleum based lubricants. It was
| banning whaling in the 20th century that lead to developing
| petroleum-based high-heat lubricants.
| lenkite wrote:
| Nice! A real life demonstration of the creation of fossil fuels.
| olliej wrote:
| Oh is this what people mean by big oil?
| lysace wrote:
| So in Goteborg, Sweden, there's an actual embalmed blue whale
| from the 1800s. I visited there as a kid in the 1980s. Had no
| idea it was unique, but apparently it's the only embalmed blue
| whale in the world. Wild.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/malm-whale
|
| (Got the "only one" bit by googling further for a long time.)
| bilsbie wrote:
| I wonder how many gallons we saved from being released into the
| ocean?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That oil is food for worms that feed exclusively on whale
| bones.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osedax
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Many years ago I attended a wedding reception in the exact hall
| pictured in the article. It was a great party.
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