Collecting whales: processes and biases in Nordic museum collections

Abstract

Whales are unique museum objects that have entered collections in many ways and for different reasons. This work studies three Nordic natural history museum collections in Norway and Denmark with more than 2,500 whale specimens in total, and gathers the available biological and collection data on the specimens, which include skeletal elements, foetuses and organs preserved in ethanol or formalin, and a few dry-preserved organs. It finds that influx of specimens, which were mainly locally common species that were hunted, to the collections, mainly happened in the latest 1800s and earliest 1900s, fuelled by research trends, nation building, local whaling, and colonial mechanisms. Norway was a major whaling nation, but the largest hunt for whales in the Southern Ocean in the mid-1900s is not reflected in the Norwegian museum collections, probably because of the commercial focus of the whaling industry and logistical challenges, combined with limited research interest in zoological specimens at that time. The results demonstrate that it is important to understand these processes and the resulting biases for future research, outreach, and conservation.

Keywords: Bias; Collection process; Denmark; Museum collection; Norway; Whales; Whaling.

Figure 1. Examples of whale specimens in museum collections.

(A) Blue whale (CN13), NHM Copenhagen. Osteological specimen, complete. (B) Striped dolphin (BM 9229), NHM Bergen. Osteological specimen, complete. (C) Wet collection, NHM Bergen. Foetuses, mostly minke whale. (D) Ovaries from fin whale in wet collection (NHMO-DMA-29084/1-P), NHM Oslo. (E) Baleen, NHM Oslo. (F) Dry preserved organ, NHM Copenhagen.

Figure 2. Temporal trends for whale specimens entering the collection, NHM Bergen, 1840–2021.

(A) Preparation type. (B) Distribution of preparation types 2022 (509 specimens). (C) Baleen and toothed whale collection. Peaks in 1881–1905 represent a large influx of Phocoena phocoena, but also L. albirostris, L. acutus and O. orca. Baleen whales are most commonly B. acutorostrata. The rare events of Southern hemisphere whaling related specimens are also recorded. Whale drawings: Nicola Dahle.

Figure 3. Temporal trends for whale specimens entering the collection, NHM Oslo, 1840–2021.

(A) Preparation type. (B) Distribution of preparation types 2022 (421 specimens). (C) Baleen and toothed whale collection. Some of the Southern hemisphere whaling related specimens are also recorded, in addition to an explanation on the peak in year 2000. Whale drawings: Nicola Dahle.

Figure 4. Geographical representation of the whale specimens in NHM Bergen (A), NHM Oslo (B) and NHM Copenhagen (C).

Note that these are the specimens with a recorded country or ocean of origin. Specimens recorded from inland Norway, “Africa” and “Pacific Ocean” were not included. Otherwise the geographical locations are used as in the dataset, even when given with different levels of precision. Legend for areas of origin: 1 Canada, 2 Greenland, 3 “Arctic Ocean”, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Arctic Ocean, 4 Iceland, 5 Norway, 6 Denmark, 7 UK including the Hebrides, 8 North Atlantic Ocean including the Faroe Islands and Azores, 9 North Europe including Sweden and Germany, 10 Mediterranean Ocean including France and Spain, 11 South Atlantic, including St. Helena specimens only, 12 South America including Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and Puerto Rico, 13 Southern African countries of South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and Senegal, 14 South Georgia and Falkland Islands, and “Antarctic”, 15 The Indian Ocean, 16 India and South East Asia including Sri Lanka and Thailand, 17 Australia, New Zealand and Solomon Islands. Map by Fabio Crameri. This graphic by Fabio Crameri adjusted from Crameri, Shephard & Heron (2020) is available via the open-access s-Ink repository. Red represents toothed whale specimens, blue represents baleen whale specimens.

Figure 5. Species composition for the collections in NHM Bergen (A), NHM Oslo (B) and NHM Copenhagen (C).

Drawings show the two most common species in each collection. Whale drawings: Nicola Dahle.