FORT BRAGG, CA., 1/28/25 — The bones of a 73-foot blue whale are stored in a barn in Mendocino, awaiting their permanent home in the Ocean Science Center planned by the Noyo Center for Marine Science.
The giant whale washed ashore in Fort Bragg in 2009, after a lethal strike by a ship propeller. An all-hands effort by scientists, students and volunteers led to the recovery and preservation of the whale bones and the launch of the Noyo Center’s Blue Whale Project. The plan is to fully articulate the whale’s skeleton in the Ocean Science Center’s “la-bone-atory.”
In the meantime, Noyo Center board member Donna Worster has most of the bones in her barn. In a title reminiscent of medieval times, the longtime Fort Bragg/Mendocino resident calls herself the Keeper of the Blue Whale Bones. She calls her charge Betty.
“A keeper has to really love what they are keeping,” says Worster. A recent tour given to this reporter bore out that Worster is fit for the job.
The whale’s 9-foot-wide skull occupies its own pedestal. The giant jaw bones are carefully laid out on the floor. Smaller visitors are invited to lie down “in the whale’s mouth” while Worster explains the nearby pieces of baleen that enabled the large creature to filter out krill and other food after taking giant gulps of seawater. Whales store all that food, Worster says, “as blubber.”
Huge rib bones line the walls. Worster demonstrates how this whale’s particular growth patterns can be traced through the closure of its epiphyseal plates – the same kind of plates that close in adolescent humans as they age. Worster thinks that Betty died young, before all the plates had fully closed.
The whale’s tail bones are labeled and set out in order. Worster can identify every one of them. She holds up a caudal vertebra at the end of the tail and points to its two socket-like holes: “This is E.T.,” she laughs.
Noyo Center Executive Director Sheila Semans appreciates Worster’s commitment to the blue whale and its future. Worster got involved in the organization in 2015 and joined the board about a year ago at the age of 91. “Donna is a gem and brings so much to our organization,” Semans said.
Some of the whale bones are already on public display. The Discovery Center on Main Street in Fort Bragg, one of the Noyo Center’s venues, is home to a portion of the whale’s ribs and vertebrae. To follow the progress on the Ocean Science Center and other Noyo Center projects, sign up for the newsletter here.
Meanwhile, the whale bones are safe.
“The ocean picked her up, turned her around and laid her on a sandbar as a gift to Fort Bragg,” Worster says.
She walked us out and then went to lock the barn door.