This skeleton of a 3 to 5 year-old, 37-foot juvenile gray whale washed up on Arroyo Beach in West Seattle April 14, 2010, struggling to breath, then died. The Highline Community College Marine Science Technology Center (MaST), 28203 Redondo Beach Dr. S., Des Moines, now displays the whale skeleton that the college flensed.

They discovered it had the whale equivalent of juvenile onset arthritis. The tip of the tail and some neck vertebrae are calcified which may have contributed to his death. Alive weighed 40,000 pounds. The skeleton and hardware weighs 2,500 pounds. Its hard-bristled baleen, the a filter-feeder system inside the mouth, is prominent.

Dr. Kaddee Lawrence, Executive Director, MaST, a West Seattle resident, was involved in the project.

"We helped NOAA, Fish & Wildlife, and Cascadia Research Collective to move the animal off the beach and do the necropsy on it to find out if we could figure out how it died," she said. "We don't know his cause of death for sure, but he had some mobility impairment issues which may have lead to his demise." she said, referring to the calcified tail and neck vertebrae.

"In return for our help, we were given the rights, the ability, to process the animal and put it back together for an educational display."

The flensing was gory and stinky, she acknowledged.

"We all were in rain gear and up to our shoulders in blubber and rotting flesh," she said. "I was standing on the 600 pound tongue on this animal cutting into the jaw to try to get to the ligaments to get the jaw loose."

There is a special exhibit about the whale in the facility for about two months. But the whale will remain.

The West Seattle Herald covered the story of the whale here and here.