Noyo Center breaks ground on Fort Bragg facility to house blue whale skeleton

The Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg broke ground this week on a 2,240-square-foot facility called the Whale House LaBONEatory, which will house a 73-foot blue whale skeleton. The skeleton will be the centerpiece of what will ultimately be the Ocean Science Center, the Noyo Center’s 11.5-acre campus for marine research, the first construction on the Noyo Headlands in generations.

The skeleton came from a whale that washed ashore on the Mendocino Coast in 2009. Hundreds of volunteers rallied to recover the bones of the animal and hauled much of 70 tons of whale up a 40-foot bluff to be buried in a nearby forest to allow natural processes to clean the bones.