The scaffolding is up!

Once the sharks in the whale hall had been moved out or protectively wrapped the scaffolders could start work and in less than a week one half of the whale hall was covered with a network of scaffolding paltforms postioned around the hanging skeltons that we could access by steps and ladders.

The scaffolding goes up around the protectively wrapped basking shark specimen

The floor of the whale hall is original, dating back to the 1800's so it cannot be heavily loaded as we don't want to risk damaging it. For this reason we made the decision that rather than putting scaffolding up in the whole hall we would scaffold half the hall and work on the skeletons hanging in that area and then dismantle and move the scaffolding to the second half of the hall and work on the remaining skeletons.


The floor and glass cabinets surrounding the walls of the hall are covered to protect them from debris and dust.


It's an exciting time as now we can get up close to the skeletons for the first time and really see what condition the bones are in and what work needs to be done to conserve them...........


The scaffolding will allow us to quite literally work in the belly of the whales!