Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil

Ok I'm going to come out and say it because I think multiple people in this thread have hinted at the same confusion: What bloody kind of oil are we talking about here? Whale oil, that somehow was captured in the bones? Petroleum oil from the whale's encounter with the tanker? They basically buried the lede on this story and nowhere appear to explain why this particular whale is dripping some kind of "oil" that seemingly other museum example don't experience. So - anyone got any insight here?

It sounds like it’s whale oil because:

- it’s coming from the bone marrow

- it has a reddish tint

- the curator says the smell is reminiscent of a whaling ship and not, say, a machine shop or oil rig.

If it burns, it burns. I'd guess that's the prehistory of it. The scientific method was barely much older than whale oil usage as far as I can tell.

It's a mixture of fats. Think olive oil, fish oil, the oils your skin excretes.

That could be - but my point is the article doesn't make it clear what kind of oil we're talking about, and as you note - the oil would come from the fats, so why is it excreting from the bones? IE: wouldn't all the potential oil have been removed when they prepared this specimen for display?

I think you are probably right, but then the natural question becomes - why? As in, is there something unique to this specimen and it's display? If I drive over to the aquarium in my state and examine the whale display, would it also drip?

Probably not -- very few whale skeletons on display are from recently deceased whales. Just a random lookup -- the one in the London Natural History Museum is from 1891. Seems likely that when it was new it also leaked some oil?

[1] "Typically, when a fresh whale specimen is collected, preparators will attempt to remove as much of this oil as possible. But even then, they cannot get all of it out of the bones."

[2] “The marrow is oily and the oil is a source of energy for these animals. Especially the baleen whales, who typically have a period of the year where they don’t feed,” Robert Rocha, the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Associate Curator of Science and Research, tells Popular Science. “There’s energy stored in the muscles and in the blubber, but the energy stored in the oil and the bones is a reserve energy source for them.”

[3] "Their bones contain a lot of oil. In life this substance is critical for the animals to maintain buoyancy in water and was the reason why so many were slaughtered during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But it can cause major issues when trying to preserve their remains in collections."

[1] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/whale-oil-and-half-an-inch-of...

[2] https://www.popsci.com/science/blue-whale-leaking-oil/

[3] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/whale-oil-and-half-an-inch-of...

My bet is that largest bones here are just too big and find some recipient where to cook them was impossible.

But both whale fat and petrol oil are possible here. Maybe the whale died by a black tide and was floating some time before to be scooped by the ship. Fin whales type are fast cetaceans and crashing with a ship is not so usual like in other cetaceans. Not unless is an ill animal.

Nice work - this is the kind of background and insight I would have expected from the journalist.

It's rather obvious that it's whale oil, given that whales used to be hunted for their oil. I don't know how you could even assume that a whale skeleton would drip petroleum.

Funny anecdote: The automatic transmission used to be lubricated with whale oil because it (whale oil) could handle higher temperatures than petroleum based lubricants. It was banning whaling in the 20th century that lead to developing petroleum-based high-heat lubricants.

> my point is the article doesn't make it clear what kind of oil we're talking about,

The article clearly explains that it is oil form the bone marrow of the animal. Quoting the relevant part:

"Rocha explained that KOBO’s bone marrow is actually 'full of oil,' even though the whale has been dead for more than two decades.

'It’s seeping out through the pores of the bones,' Rocha said. 'The outer edges of the bone are a little more porous than human bones and [gravity is] just pulling the oil out.'"

Yeah, you paid for it after all

Bone marrow contains fat cells.

I think the transmission stuff was sperm oil, wax from head of a sperm whale. Which probably accounts for some of the confusion here. There were several different products derived from whales, if you're not aware of that you wouldn't expect to find sperm whale dome grease in a blue whale's bones.

The nomenclature isn't that clear, and none of us have first hand experience with any of them anymore so all of our knowledge about this is from third hand reddit TILs and moby dick.

Yes, very familiar with vintage ATF and it has a distinctive smell different from later formulations, likely due to the use of whale oil (whaleoleum?) instead of petroleum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEXRON#1973_–_DEXRON-II(C)

From the article:

> Rocha explained that KOBO’s bone marrow is actually “full of oil,” even though the whale has been dead for more than two decades.

> “It’s seeping out through the pores of the bones,” Rocha said. “The outer edges of the bone are a little more porous than human bones and [gravity is] just pulling the oil out.”

Machine shops actually used whale oil until quite late. Much better than equivalent petroleum products until the '50s or later.

> I don't know how you could even assume that a whale skeleton would drip petroleum.

Rather than being an ass, perhaps you could read my comment and note that I quote the article in which it appears to reference a goddamn oil tanker as the cause of death. We fucking know whales were hunted for their oil, now are you ready to join the adults in the conversation or are you going to continue to be a know-it-all prick?