Kendrapada: The Odisha Forest Department has announced plans to preserve the skeleton of a 25-foot-long Bryde’s whale that washed ashore near the mouth of the Devi River last Saturday.
It will be displayed at the Natural History Museum in Dangamal within Bhitarkanika National Park in Odisha’s Kendrapada district.
Officials from the Forest Department confirmed that the whale was a Bryde’s whale, a species rarely spotted in Odisha’s waters. The carcass was retrieved and buried to allow natural decomposition of soft tissues, following a postmortem to ascertain the cause of its death. Once this process is complete, the skeleton will be carefully retrieved, cleaned, and preserved. “Noted wildlife biologist Siba Prasad Parida and his team examined the skeleton on Monday for the mounting work,” Bhitarkanika National Park DFO Varadaraj Gaonkar was quoted as saying.
Parida, who has extensive experience in this field having successfully completed skeleton-mounting projects for five whales over the past 14 years in Odisha, West Bengal, and Karnataka, said that DNA, bone, and skin samples have already been gathered and submitted to the Forest Department. These will be sent to the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) in Kolkata for detailed analysis, including species confirmation, gender determination, genetic diversity mapping, and assessments of population health or potential pollution impacts.
