Dissecting the world’s rarest whale – in pictures

Jim Fyfe and Tūmai Cassidy, both conservation rangers, walk with the rare spade-toothed whale, Mesoplodon traversii, after it was found washed ashore on the South Island beach in New Zealand on 5 July.

Sophie White, from Otago University, addresses Māori representatives, Department of Conservation officials and scientists to discuss the dissection. As well as establishing everyone’s roles and safety protocols, the meeting was also to ensure tikanga (Māori ethical guidelines) were observed.

Prof Joy Reidenberg, an anatomist at the Icahn school of medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, left; Anton van Helden, an expert on beaked whales with the conservation department;and Carolina Loch, a biologist at the Otago dentistry faculty, discuss plans for the dissection at the Invermay Agricultural Centre.

Representatives of two Māori tribes, the Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Wai, with conservation department officials and scientists begin to dissect the beaked whale. Dr Alex Werth (bottom left) examines the gular, or throat, of the male cetacean, while Sophie White and Te Kaurinui Parata start to remove the epaxial muscles, which run alongside the spine and help move body parts such as dorsal fins.

Te Kaurinui Parata, a whale expert and Ngāti Wai representative, holds a knife and a blubber hook that will be used to remove the epaxial muscles from the left side of the animal.

Parata begins to remove a portion of the large epaxial muscles from the animal’s back. Scientists weigh these blocks to get a total mass for these muscle groups to help make comparisons with other deep-diving beaked whales.

A block of epaxial muscles is removed. The muscle is dark red because it is filled with myoglobin, which stores oxygen for the whales’ deep dives in search of prey.

Dr Alex Werth, a biology professor at Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College in the US, holds part of the epaxial muscle on a blubber hook, showing how dark it is from the myoglobin.

String is used in photographs of dissections to show where the muscles are attached and the direction in which the muscle fibres are pulling. This helps to make the findings more obvious for later description or illustration, and to show how they affect movement. Here, the scientists are examining muscles around the scapula, or shoulder blade, and flipper.

Reidenberg uses forceps and a scalpel to dissect the muscles and structures of the throat ahead of the sternum. Her particular interest is in the larynx and linked structures. The bar in the image shows the scale of the area being examined.

Hori Parata, a Māori elder and whale expert from Whangārei, with his son Te Kaurinui. Hori has worked on more than 500 whale and dolphin strandings across the country and feels strongly about the need to pass on his mātauranga – or knowledge – to younger people.

Some of the Māori representatives, Department of Conservation staff and scientists who worked on the dissection. They described themselves as tired but pleased with progress. Their findings included the discovery that spade-toothed whales have nine stomach chambers and vestigial teeth in the upper jaw.