New exhibit at Royal Ontario Museum includes two whales from Prince Edward Island

A new exhibit called Great Whales: Up Close and Personal is scheduled to open this summer at the Royal Ontario Museum, and it will have a couple of key P.E.I. connections.

The exhibit focuses on three whales: the endangered North Atlantic right whale, the sperm whale, and the blue whale, which is the largest animal ever to have existed on Earth. 

The sperm whale and right whale skeletons in the exhibit were retrieved from beaches on Prince Edward Island.

Jacqui Miller is a mammalogy technician at the Royal Ontario Museum, and was on P.E.I. to recover the right whale that will be part of the Great Whales exhibit.

Miller said 2017 was a tragic year for the right whales, with the highest mortality rate in memory. 

"What I remember most is the anxiety, because the salvage happened on Canada Day weekend. And we were notified of the potential necropsies about three days before," Miller said. 

"So I had from Wednesday to Friday to put a team together that could do the salvage, the heavy lifting."

According to researchers, the whale that Miller and her team retrieved is a North Atlantic right whale, which had survived at least three entanglements with fishing gear during his life, before a ship strike in the Gulf of St. Lawrence killed him.

It was one of three dead whales towed to the beach at Norway, P.E.I.  

"It was a very sad weekend, and that I remember too," Miller said.

"The sentiment of everyone on that beach during this event, you can't describe it."

Miller said they've been able to learn a lot about the right whale since retrieving it from the beach on P.E.I. 

"He's a very big male. He's quite a mature male. And we didn't even know how mature until we actually got his entire skeleton fully prepared and ready to mount," Miller said.

"They've been tracking him for over 37 years. They have photographic evidence that he was an adult when they started tracking him, so he's been a good survivor in all of this."

'Sad event'

Miller said the sperm whale also has P.E.I. connections. 

It died after beaching on a sandbar in Kildare Capes, in western Prince Edward Island, on the night of Dec. 12, 2001. 

"The sperm whale was one of the first ones we had an opportunity to salvage, and that was a very sad event," Miller said. 

"There were some efforts made to redirect him back to water, but he just kept beaching himself, and eventually the decision was made to euthanize him on the beach.

"He's basically been in storage, waiting a moment to have his moment under the spotlight, to have his stage time," Miller said.

"And so we're finally able to give it to him, and we're very happy about that."

Building the exhibit

Miller said a team of 20 has been working on getting the exhibit ready. 

"You have to story-board it in a way that everyone can understand," Miller said.

"That doesn't matter if you're from Toronto, or if you're from the East Coast, or if you're from a university, or if you're a child, you have to be able to get something out of the exhibition."

Miller said it normally takes a couple of years to put together an exhibition, while this one has been about a year, including the added challenges of the pandemic.  

"We're very proud at the museum for getting people close to things, and letting them touch them, and really appreciate and understand them, and not just see them in a jar or behind the case," Miller said.

"The pandemic has had us rethink all of these installations and interactions that we would normally just take for granted."

Interactive features

Miller said the exhibition also includes some interactive features, including a rumbling sound chamber, that will allow visitors to experience the vocalizations of the blue and sperm whales.

"It's basically a small theatre that you walk in and you're immediately immersed in swimming whales, and in the backdrop you start to hear some of the vocalizations these whales can make," Miller said. 

"The blue whale, that's where the rumbling comes in. The frequency is so low, and the power is so big, that if there's a hollow structure around, like your sound chamber, you can actually feel a vibration."

Miller said, despite delays because of COVID, the team persevered, showing the same resilience as the endangered right whales. 

"We can mount these whales and bring their stories, not just their biology, but their lives, their conservation, what's needed to go forward in the future, and have people get really close," Miller said. 

"We're hoping people will be able to come out of the exhibition with that connection, that very personal connection, however it develops for them from the exhibition." 

Great Whales: Up Close and Personal was originally scheduled to open in June, but has been delayed because of COVID restrictions.

The ROM is now saying it will open sometime in the summer of 2021.

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