The skeleton of fin whale

Since August 2008, what has become one of the symbols of the municipality and the region of Isla Baja has been erected on the coast of Los Silos, the natural sculpture of the skeleton of a whale about 17 meters long. In live weight she was weighing around 27 tonnes. This is a natural skeleton of a female fin whale. This sculpture is intended to be a tribute to the great ocean travelers, a symbol of the conservation of the sea and a means to guarantee its survival. Since then, many legends, comments and opinions have surrounded this skeleton. The stories of a whale that washed up on the coast of Los Silos, until it died from colliding with a boat or continually suffered sabotage. All this, nothing is reality.

The marine waters of the Canary Islands are one of the areas in the world where the greatest diversity of cetaceans has been observed. Toothed cetaceans or odontocetes are the most common on the islands. Species such as the bottlenose dolphin, the pilot whale and the sperm whale can be seen throughout the year. Other species, among which are the fin whale, the orca and the blue whale are seasonal and have been observed as they pass through the islands during their feeding migrations.

Our whale was a female northern fin whale, one of the largest animals on the planet. It was a great traveling whale that every year crossed the waters between the tropics and the cold poles, where it reproduced when summer arrived. Her corpse was found floating in waters near the south of the island of Gran Canaria and brought ashore to study the causes of his death. Apparently he died of natural causes, derived from the presence of numerous intestinal parasites in his digestive tract, according to the necropsy carried out by members of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Canarias Conservación. After examination several places on the island were considered to display the skeleton, including the port of Santa Cruz and other emblematic places in coastal municipalities, the final decision to do exhibit the skeleton in Los Silos had a lot to do with the efforts of a group of people with the aim of putting in value our coast.