A MISSING piece will be added to Museum Victoria's extensive
collection of more than 35,000 specimens when the first full
humpback whale skeleton arrives in Carlton on Thursday. The
13-metre skeleton, weighing a hefty 3.5 tonnes, has spent the
past year buried in sand on a section of Gippsland's Ninety Mile
Beach Beach between Woodside and Seaspray. The adolescent male,
which would have weighed about 30 tonnes, washed up last
September and died soon after beaching itself. While humpback
whales are not a rare species, they have remained a missing
piece of the museum's collection because undamaged specimens can
be hard to reach. ''For a whale of this size to wash up on a
beach with such good access is a real bonus,'' said Museum
Victoria manager of preparations Peter Swinkels. It took two
days last year to strip the carcass back to a skeleton and break
it up into manageable sections. Museum staff were able to remove
90 per cent of the meat and blubber. Internal organs were also
removed and tissue and barnacle s