Q&A: A talk with directors of the Hubbs’ beaked whale project in Fort Bragg

WHEN A RARE FEMALE BEAKED WHALE washed ashore on the Mendocino Coast just south of Fort Bragg, it sparked a scientific collaboration that stretched from Fort Bragg to San Francisco. The Noyo Center for Marine Science and the California Academy of Sciences joined forces to study, preserve and eventually articulate, or put together, the skeleton of a Hubbs’ beaked whale, one of the ocean’s most elusive deep-diving species.

On Sept. 15, the Noyo Center hosted the Hubbs’ Beaked Whale Articulation Workshop, giving the public a chance to watch teams of volunteers and scientists reassemble the skeleton. The process took several weeks of painstaking effort. At the center of the effort were Sarah Grimes, the Noyo Center’s stranding coordinator; Sheila Semans, the center’s executive director; and Moe Flannery, senior collections manager of ornithology and mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences.