Dippy and the Whale Horizon

London's Natural History Museum

is one of the world's most prestigious institutions.

Since it opened in 1881,

over 600 million visitors have passed through its doors.

It's a spectacular monument to Earth's biodiversity.

And since 1979, a dinosaur, Dippy the diplodocus,

has welcomed everyone as they enter the main hall.

He's one of the museum's most adored attractions.

I'm very closely attached to him.

But in 2015,

the museum took the controversial decision to call time on Dippy.

It announced that the hall was going to be given a new star attraction,

one that has been here, gathering dust, for over 100 years.

The skeleton of a huge blue whale.

-Wow.

-I know! It's amazing, isn't it?

It's remarkable.

The museum wants to change its image

and has decided on a very ambitious way of doing so.

-This is basically where the action's going to be.

-Yep.

But getting it there will be a truly extraordinary

-engineering challenge.

-Er... You're tilting now.

And these are the people who have to make it happen.

-Oops.

-That's it.

-The skull coming off, that's my worst nightmare.

Horizon has been watching behind-the-scenes

in the Natural History Museum for over two years...

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa!

The skull is currently 14 centimetres too large

to fit in this door, as it currently stands.

..following two giants of natural history,

a dinosaur and a blue whale...

And we're on the beach that the blue whale beached on, back in 1891.

..and one audacious dream.

-Why are we doing this again?

-HE LAUGHS

The Natural History Museum

is renowned for its scientific research

and world-class collections.

And for the last 38 years,

Dippy the dinosaur has been standing centre stage.

Lorraine Cornish, the museum's head of conservation,

has been responsible for looking after him for all that time.

What we're doing today is cleaning Dippy,

which is a regular process,

takes place every six months or so.

Lorraine has been caring for the museum's exhibits for over 30 years.

I initially started working in a laboratory downstairs,

but soon I was allowed to come up and work in the galleries,

on the objects on display, and that was always deeply satisfying,

because you knew any work that you were going to be doing,

the public would see.

And she has a special place in her heart for Dippy.

I'm very closely attached to him,

because he was put into this gallery just the year before I joined

the museum, so we've had a similar amount of time together here.

What many people don't realise is that Dippy is not a real fossil,

he's a plaster replica.

However, this hasn't stopped him

amazing visitors ever since he arrived.

Let's see if we can find out how long it is.

Look up at its head there.

John, would you like to take a walk?

When you come to the end of his tail, you wave to us.

The plan to move Dippy hasn't gone down well with the public.

It's just, it's always the first thing you expect to see when you walk in.

I mean, we'd rather the dinosaur stay there.

But the museum is hoping that its new major exhibit

will eventually be as much-loved as Dippy.

Richard Sabin has been the curator of the museum's marine mammal

collection for the past 24 years

and is one of the world's experts on whales.

It was he who championed the idea to have a whale replace Dippy.

Hintze Hall has always been

a dynamic space. Over the life of the Natural History Museum,

from 1881, the central displays have changed.

When I first visited the museum in 1976, before Dippy was in place,

there were other specimens in there, elephants...

Erm, there'd been a sperm whale skeleton in Hintze Hall in the past.

Hintze Hall is the grand entrance of the museum

and was designed to dazzle the visitor

with the beauty and complexity of the natural world.

I think with the blue whale, when people see this enormous skeleton

in that wonderful architectural space,

I think very quickly, any critics that we have will be silenced,

and, you know, children and their children over the next 20-30 years

will come to accept the blue whale skeleton

as the new iconic central specimen for the museum.

As the skeleton of the world's biggest animal,

and one of its most endangered,

the museum wants the whale to be a reminder of humanity's delicate

relationship with the natural world

and our responsibility to care for all life on Earth.

Jennifer Flippance is the project manager in charge

of the whale's move into this historic space.

It looks like a really big hall.

The entrances are actually very small,

and it's going to be quite tight on the day that we bring it in.

It's Jen's job to fulfil Richard's ambitious dream

and hang the whale from the girders in a new, exciting way.

-This is basically where the action's going to be.

-Yep.

I mean, the idea is that we give the skeleton a lot more dynamism

than it has currently, cos at the moment, it's kind of, you know,

-stamp collector's pose.

-Yeah, yeah.

Very horizontal. Very Victorian, actually.

We need to build in as much kind of movement,

-implied movement as possible.

-Yeah.

I'm just imagining that specimen kind of swimming through the space

and imagining it diving down towards the visitors as they come in through

-the entrance.

-That will look really dramatic, too.

-Exactly.

Mouth wide open, you know?

People walking in have this great spectacle, oohs and ahs.

Suspending the bones of the whale will be a truly unique challenge.

-It's going to be a feat, I think, of engineering...

-Mm.

..to be given a frame that's going to allow us to do the things

that we want to do.

And certainly, if we put the degree of dynamism into the specimen

that I'm hoping we can, it's going to include things like, you know,

a lot of curvature in the vertical column,

-the tail sort of flexing up, the flippers out.

-OK, so...

All the things that we don't have currently, basically.

But it's going to be incredible, I think, absolutely incredible.

Inspire a new generation of marine biologists.

Yeah. That's we want.

Yeah, we want the same kind of kick for the new marine biologists

that I had as a kid.

Jen is in charge of overseeing all the staff

and ensuring everything is completed in time for the grand opening.

The pressure is certainly on.

We're doing a lot things we haven't done before, and I'm doing

a lot of things I haven't done before as a project manager.

It does give you some nervousness doing things,

and there's a big health and safety element, obviously,

which is probably my biggest concern overall,

getting it down safely and putting it back up so it's safe.

So that's certainly a thing that would keep me awake at night.

The first thing Jen needs to do is to get Richard's skeleton down

in one piece.

Not an easy job, considering it hasn't been moved for over 70 years.

Richard and Lorraine are anxious to see what state the whale is in.

This is the first time they've been able to get an idea

of the condition of her bones.

-Dust.

-Wow!

-I know!

It's amazing, isn't it?

-It's remarkable.

-I know.

You've just got this fantastic, thick carpet going all the way.

Due to the proximity of other exhibits in the hall,

and the delicate nature of the ever-ageing bones,

this skeleton will have to be painstakingly dismantled

piece by piece.

This is just going to be great.

The team can't wait to start.

Before it can be brought down...

That will disappear, that will look so much more beautiful.

Don't worry.

..Lorraine has been joined by conservator Ari

to help with the cleaning and tagging

of every one of the 220 bones.

They will then have to reinforce the weaker bones

before the dismantling can even begin.

Um, it's very unique,

so you do want to make sure that you are doing everything properly.

You want to make sure you catch every single sign of weakness,

so that you can stabilise it,

so that it can come down safely and it isn't damaged.

With the skull now free of dust,

Richard is able to examine it in detail.

The one thing that you need to remember

when you look at this lower jawbone

of this beautiful blue whale specimen

is that this is the largest single bone to be grown

by any organism on the planet that we know of.

I find that quite remarkable.

This is an incredibly special experience,

I think for me or anyone,

because I'm seeing things that I've never seen before.

The lead members of the team who put this skeleton together

actually left their signatures.

When they finished their work in February 1934,

they decided, like a great work of art, to leave their signatures.

And they're under...

..the skull, on the inside, by this metal strap.

You can see the signatures of four of the men who worked.

It's quite a nice little dedication, I think.

It took 20 men six months to hang the whale,

without today's strict health and safety regulations.

Looking at some of the photographs, those men took incredible chances.

They were working off long ladders, wooden ladders, using ropes,

standing on the specimen.

You know, they didn't have safety gear.

They wore flat caps and leather aprons.

They really were different times.

It was sort of before health and safety existed.

But they did a great job. We can't criticise them for that.

Back in the 1930s, it would have been a huge challenge

to hang this 4.5-tonne whale in a flat pose.

But Richard wants something even more difficult.

He wants the new exhibit to amaze visitors

by capturing how these animals behave in the wild.

Blue whales can weigh up to 200 tonnes

and measure up to 30 metres in length.

They're not only the biggest animal on Earth today,

they are, as far as we know, the biggest ever to have existed,

far bigger than any dinosaur.

They used to be abundant,

but we hunted them so intensively

that their numbers dropped dramatically,

from around 360,000 to an estimated 12,000.

Richard has never seen a blue whale in the wild.

He's come out to California

in the hope that he may glimpse one and get some inspiration from it.

I'm going out for the very first time on a boat

to see some of the coolest animals on the planet.

I'm incredibly excited.

He's going to be joining one of the world's foremost blue whale experts,

John Calambokidis.

I first saw a blue whale

over 30 years ago.

And from the first time I saw it,

this beautiful, huge,

shimmering shape under the water,

I kind of fell in love with it.

And so right away, I became captivated by the opportunity

to learn things about blue whales.

-Hey.

-Hi, John.

-Hey, Richard.

-Good to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

ENGINE TURNS OVER

John works off the coast of California

in an area where blue whales regularly come to feed.

But although they're very big, the Pacific is even bigger...

I'm not picking up anything on my depth sounder.

They don't seem to sticking in one spot.

..and blue whales only surface for one to two minutes

to snatch a breath before diving and disappearing for up to 15,

so the boat will have to be in the right place at just the right time

if John is to get a close view of the animal that so fascinates him.

What is it we're looking out for specifically?

Well, right now, when conditions are good enough,

we'll actually be looking for the blow.

We can see a blow of a blue whale from miles away,

and that'll be this plume of mist

from its exhalation that can extend up 7-8 metres up into the air

and will hang there briefly depending on how much wind there is.

-We might see the back of a blue whale as it surfaces.

-Right.

As fog closes in and the visibility gets less,

sometimes we'll have to shut down

and actually just listen for the blows.

Now it's just a waiting game.

Uh, Richard, I think we got one over here off the port bow!

Wow!

That's really close.

Look at this! Looks like it's going to fluke up, yeah.

Down he goes.

And again, another one.

Oh, fantastic.

Absolutely fantastic.

I've just got no words to describe it, to be honest with you.

I am genuinely lost for words.

Incredible.

Now they have found the whales, John's work can begin.

He gains crucial information by attaching harmless tags to them.

The tags we're attaching have three-dimensional magnetometers,

gyroscopes, that give us exactly how deep the whale's diving,

how it's approaching prey, how many times it feeds,

at what depth does it feed.

This new technology are opening up the whole underwater world

of blue whales.

The world's largest animal feeds on one of the smallest, krill.

Every day, they must eat over four tonnes

of this small shrimplike crustacean,

just to fill their gigantic stomachs.

The whales are able to open their jaws to over 90 degrees,

engulfing whole shoals in just one mouthful.

This feeding action is the single biggest bodily movement

made by any creature in the world.

It is that feeding action that's really inspiring me.

It's making me realise just how important it is

for us to put dynamism into that specimen

back at the Natural History Museum,

and that's the kind of thing that will really grab people's attention,

make the science much more tangible,

and, in the end, that's what we need to do.

We need to get people to connect with what's going on out here.

John's research is also helping him to save these extraordinary animals,

because even though their numbers have risen slightly

since whaling stopped, they're now facing several new threats.

We've been able to discover that blue whales don't tend to even avoid

approaching ships and a lot of my research has focused

on some of the solutions,

like we discovered that blue whales spend twice as much time

at the surface at night than they do in the day,

and that's the period when they're most vulnerable to ship strikes,

so that identified right there that we need to be most concerned

about ships that are transiting through blue whale areas at night

rather than in the day.

This whole experience today has really helped crystallise in my mind

exactly what it is we need.

The broader message is a conservation message.

Our species took blue whales to the edge of extinction,

and through our efforts we've managed to help it recover.

So it's a model, in terms of the hope that we have got

for the future, and if we can translate

what we've seen here today and give some of that feeling,

some of that experience to people who visit the museum,

then, for me, it'll be a dream come true.

After being left in the museum's dusty rafters for decades,

the time has now come to dismantle the skeleton.

This feels incredibly momentous,

because it is the first of the bones to be removed.

I'm glad to say we all agreed that we should start

with the small things. Made sense.

Effectively, what we're all doing now

is reverse engineering

what was done in 1934.

Every long journey begins with a small step,

and this is the smallest of the steps.

CHEERING

How brilliant was that? Well done, Ari.

Great twisting movement, I think, there.

Richard, what does it feel like?

It feels...

momentous.

It's incredibly significant.

I mean, everything gets bigger and more difficult from here.

But each surface of the bone has been marked,

so which is the upper surface, which is the proper left side,

the proper right side, and which is the underneath,

to make sure the whale doesn't go on back-to-front

-when it's remounted.

-You wouldn't let that happen, Richard.

I wouldn't let that happen, no, it would be obvious.

I'm going to hand it over to the conservators now.

-We'll look after it, don't worry.

-We'll take very good care of it.

You can have visitation rights.

A week later, and Lorraine is starting to discover

some of the tricks the team used to hang the whale back in the '30s.

-Hi.

-Hello. That's an enormous piece of metal.

I know. Isn't it?

It's huge. And what they've done is, they obviously slid

a vertebra on, and then they've taken some wooden wedges

and they've just banged them in.

And so, to try and get those wedges out was really difficult.

-Started back there.

-Right.

It's worked up.

Newspaper, wood, wooden pieces nailed in to the wood,

anything they could think of, really,

to stuff down into the middle.

-So, quite a crude process they've used.

-Very crude.

-Yeah.

-Crude but effective.

-Yes.

Each bone successfully removed is another small victory for the team.

Ooh.

It's like a baby, isn't it?

Do you want to have a hold, Richard?

The team slowly work their way along the vertebrae,

and the closer to the head they get,

the more battling they have to do.

Not only do the bits of wood get bigger...

Joy.

..so do the bits of newspaper.

There's lots of it.

The Kent Messenger.

December 24th 1932.

Christmas Eve.

As more vertebrae are taken off this giant kebab skewer...

It's off, it's off.

..the bones get harder to handle.

Each one is becoming more and more difficult

in terms of manoeuvring and making sure

that we're not breaking off any of the processes.

-Oops.

-That's it, that's it. Down we go.

Oops.

And a good dollop of elbow grease is required

to free the whale's rib cage.

Delightful.

But they're able to detach a whole flipper in one go.

It's an interesting relationship that we're building up

with this whale. We're getting to know its little tricks now.

The point we're that with the project now

is the entire postcranial skeleton,

that's everything except the skull and lower jaw, has been removed.

And we're at a really pretty critical point.

Probably the most technically challenging part

of the deconstruction there,

because we have the three largest elements of the skeleton left.

The first of these bones to be freed from their steel cage...

..are the two mandibles.

The sound of the chains. Just harmony, isn't it?

-Blessed relief.

-Isn't it lovely to watch, though, eh?

Yeah, you're tilting now.

Before her mandibles can be freed...

Ah...

..their dental work needs to be removed.

Careful!

Extraction...has taken place.

With the mandibles finally on their way down,

it's time to tackle the skull.

We've always known that moving the skull

would be the most difficult bit, because of its size and its weight

and its complexity of how it's put together.

Jen has had a specially designed cradle built

to help them manoeuvre the skull down safely.

We're just trying to, as we go, eliminate as many risks as possible,

but it's risky, it is risky.

The skull needs to be turned vertically before it's moved.

The minute the skull rotates is when we really have to be

so sure about the fact that it's not going to move

off of that cradle. That would be so bad.

The skull being damaged or coming off catastrophically,

that's my worst nightmare.

But even in this raised position,

getting past the cables will be tricky.

It's these cables.

-Yeah.

-The outrigger legs are adjustable.

Yeah. They can come in...

Can they come in...?

Can they come in a bit?

-We're very good at cutting off things.

-Yeah, yeah.

-It's our MO.

-Absolutely.

-So you could save 20 centimetres or 15 centimetres.

But they're going to need more than 15 centimetres

on the scaffolding platform.

You ideally want to lose some of this...

the scaffolding here, then, don't you?

Jen arranges for the safety rail to be removed,

ready to lower the skull to the ground.

It's another tense moment for Lorraine.

If the skull or its frame slips now,

the consequences could be unthinkable.

Well done! Well done, everyone!

APPLAUSE

Brilliant! What a relief.

What a relief. Getting it off the scaffolding,

through all those cables,

around all the specimens and down onto the floor

is a really...a really brilliant achievement.

After a painstaking four months and the removal of 220 individual bones,

the skeleton is down and ready to be moved to the museum's lab,

so that conservation work can begin.

Richard wants to discover the history of his whale,

so that he can share it with the museum's visitors.

His detective work has brought him to Ireland

where the whale was found more than a century ago.

We're on the beach, here in Wexford.

Coming here, it's really poignant

because we can see the natural environment, pretty much,

that the blue whale beached on back in 1891.

Back then, though there were plenty of blue whales out at sea,

it would have been rare for them to come so close to the shore,

to get accidentally beached.

This boat here, it's actually roughly the same size

as our blue whale,

not just the size of the boat in terms of its length,

but the height, you know.

Our whale would have towered over

any observers two and a half, three metres tall...

even on its side.

And imagine what a spectacle that would have been for people -

people who were approaching this living wall of matter,

living, breathing, moving, not knowing what to expect,

not the what was going to happen next.

Ned Wickham was the first to discover the whale stranded

all those years ago.

Ned's granddaughter, Mary, and Elizabeth.

And 126 years later...

Ned's granddaughter.

..Richard's come to meet some of his descendants.

Grandson Raymond.

Grandson Brian.

Grandson Fergus.

And Ned's granddaughter Elizabeth has something special

to show Richard - some of his letters.

So this is a letter, detailing what grandad encountered at the time,

saying that he jumped into his boat and examined the commotion from a...

-Respectful distance.

-..respectful distance.

For the villagers of Wexford,

a whale stranded on their shore would have been a stroke of luck,

a real bonanza.

Blue whales were very valuable

because of the great quantity of oil they contained.

So saving her was probably the last thing

that Ned Wickham had on his mind.

By the next day, it had lost so much vitality

in its effort to leave Ireland

that Mr Wickham was able to sail up puncture it

with an improvised harpoon.

An improvised harpoon.

Once the whale was dead, she was put up for auction

to the highest bidder.

It was sold for 111 to Mr William Armstrong of Wexford.

That's very interesting.

Back in London, Andrea Hart,

head of the museum's special library collections,

is working in the archives.

Richard has asked her to see if they contain any information

about Mr Armstrong.

So here in front of me I have a letter from Armstrong to Guenther,

who was the head of the Zoology Department,

dated April 14, 1891,

and so within this letter he has given details about

the physical characteristics of this stranded whale.

So you have here the colour being black,

the belly a dark slate colour,

and then also you've also got this rather cute picture of a whale

on the back,

so I think this would have helped ascertain that it was a blue whale,

but as you can see,

not the most scientifically accurate illustration.

Especially as it looks quite smiley as well.

The records show that Mr Armstrong wanted to exploit his purchase

as much as he could.

So this telegraph, dated the 23rd of April,

Armstrong asks, "Would you buy the whale bone?

"If so, make me an offer."

A blue whale skeleton was clearly something the museum

was interested in acquiring.

So we find here this final letter that the museum states that,

"We will give to you £250 and no more for the skeleton,

"clean and ready for mounting."

Armstrong had sold her oil for fuel, her meat to the dog food factory,

and had now just doubled his money on the bones alone.

Under the public's gaze in the museum's pop-up studio,

the conservation team have been inspecting every square inch

of the skeleton.

On the whole, it's in actually quite good condition, I would say,

considering it was up, suspended for 81 years.

I think there are parts of the whale, however,

which are a bit more vulnerable.

There are some very large cracks, for instance,

going through the mandibles, and so we really need to address that,

because when we put it back up on display,

and we've got to the public wandering around underneath,

looking at it, we really don't want any parts of it

to drop on top of them.

Just like a team of skilled decorators,

they feel they cracks with a special putty.

And though they were expecting a little damage,

they didn't realise that some parts would be completely missing.

So, for instance, the right flipper,

when the girls were cleaning it and having a look at it,

it was looking not... A little bit suspicious,

sort of thinking that it didn't look...

The surface didn't look quite the same as it should be,

if it was natural bone.

So after doing a few tests and things,

we found out that it was actually mainly plaster,

and so I think everyone was surprised about that.

Even Richard.

Fortunately, Lorraine has got her team scanning the entire skeleton

in 3-D, so rather than make the whale a plaster cast

as the men did back in 1934,

she is making a brand-new 3-D printed replica in plastic.

The whale skull is too big to fit in the temporary pop-up studio,

so it's being kept in the museum's off-site warehouse.

If you want to feed in, in this area here.

With the conservation work on the skull finished,

Richard is going to show it off to the museum's science educators.

It's pretty overwhelming straightaway.

So welcome to the collection.

The big stuff, the large vertebrate collection,

the taxidermy collection,

the whale and dolphin research collection, it's all here.

The museum has over 80 million specimens,

gathered from every corner of the planet.

And though the fashion for shooting and then mounting endangered species

has is largely ceased since Victorian days,

the fact that people once did so means that today the museum

is a world-class research facility,

visited by scientists from around the globe.

This is a zoologist's gold mine.

And of course the elephant in the room is not really an elephant,

it's a whale.

This is the skull of the fantastic blue whale,

and the conservators have said that we can take off these wraps,

so you can take a good look at it.

So what I need are four people, please, who can give me a hand.

Brilliant. What we're going to do is we're going to grab the sheets,

so take it away.

Wow.

Yeah.

The staff's enthusiasm will help them answer the questions

from the museum's visitors.

She was recorded at just over 25 metres in length,

which is a good size, but it's not fully grown.

You know, we know that North Atlantic blue whale females

can go larger than that.

Richard has now even been able to estimate the whale's age.

We used techniques which are similar to what forensic anthropologists use

when they're examining a human skeleton.

The current estimate,

the current sort of working estimate that we've got

is that she was probably between 10 and 15 years old.

Which isn't that old,

when you think that these animals can probably live

to well over 100 years.

The day has come to say goodbye to Dippy.

To the right. It's going to be slightly longer exposure.

There's time for just one last photo.

We would like for everyone to stand very still as the photo is taken,

please, so your face is not a blur.

One of the museum's most familiar characters is leaving,

and all the staff have come to say goodbye.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And it's not just the staff who want to have one last look.

Dippy has been a fascination for many children.

It's amazing to think that it lived a long time ago,

that it was actually walking around.

A bit sad that he's going.

But maybe I can see other dinosaurs, maybe.

However, it's not all bad news for Dippy.

He's going on new adventure.

The museum are sending him around the UK as a touring exhibit.

Today, Richard has got some important visitors from Canada

who were responsible for building the dinosaurs

in the film Jurassic Park.

They will be the ones building the new steel frame for the whale.

But to start with, they've been working on something

a little smaller.

-Nice packing.

-Oh, man. I see the top of the skull.

Oh, wow.

Great, isn't it?

Wow. It is. Fantastic.

-So cute.

-If only they were that easy to move.

This exact replica in miniature of Richard's blue whale

has been built using Lorraine's 3-D scans.

If we bend it over the edge of the table,

it's got an aluminium armature, so you can actually shape it.

-OK. OK.

-You can't do that with the real thing, can you?

Matt Fair is leading the project,

and his team have even built a model of Hintze Hall

to the same scale as a miniature whale.

-It's great, isn't it?

-It's amazing.

-To scale.

-It is amazing.

-It's just amazing.

I had no idea we were getting anything like this,

but this is superb.

This is the last chance for Richard

to get his whale's diving pose just right.

The overall posture of the specimen

allows us to address all these different issues about, you know,

how the animal moves, how it feeds, energy expenditure,

the acrobatics and he goes through.

Really, these little details, when we put them into the skeleton

in its final position, it's going to make it exciting,

it's going to be meaningful to people, we hope,

and it'll be using data, basically fresh from the field,

to inform how we position this skeleton.

That's... That's good. It's a real kind of sweet spot, this,

cos it has to be high enough to not be an issue

for anyone using the hall,

but low enough to be impressive,

you know, close to our visitors, so they get a real sense

of the size of the thing, you know.

It's going to take some time, but I think from this

we'll get exactly what we need as a blueprint

for the guys to take away to make the frame.

Brilliant. Thank you.

The skull is on the road again.

It's going to be reunited with the rest of its skeleton

in this gigantic aeroplane hangar near Oxford.

It's here Matt will build the steel frame armature

to hold the whale in a lifelike posture.

Well, we need the armature to hold the skeleton together.

In nature, it would be held together by the blubber

and the muscle tissue and all the connective tissues,

and also the buoyancy in water.

In this case, when we put it in a museum,

we can't rely on just the bone itself,

so we need a steel structure.

The team are studying Richard's plans for the diving pose

and will then build the metal work to support it.

We start building an armature like you can see here

in the computer which gives us a map or a diagram

of how we'll make the actual finished product.

So this is steel armature running through the interior of the centrum,

and the top one is a pipe going through the neural canal.

By adding a special steel backbone,

no more holes need to be drilled into the skeleton.

It's also an extra safety precaution,

to keep the skeleton safe,

and the thousands of visitors who will walk underneath it every day.

Brett is responsible for turning the computer designs into reality.

I'm here as one of the lead metalworkers.

It's my job to piece the steel together,

to build the structure of these animals

and actually shape it and give it...

You know, bring it to life.

It's a bit of a challenge to get these organic shapes.

We need to follow the shape of the bone

and also make the metalwork look seamless.

We have to fit our steel within what was already made.

Two weeks later, and with half the backbone built,

Richard is starting to get excited.

I'm completely overwhelmed, to be quite honest with you.

To start to see it coming together like this, it just feels...

It feels right.

I first saw this blue whale skeleton when I was ten years old,

being told that this was the largest animal on the planet

and it's all I can remember from that day was this specimen.

Seeing her like this now,

even in this environment and partially reconstructed,

placing her into this new posture,

it's really breathing new life into the specimen.

But Jen is more interested in the whale's skull.

She's asked for it to be put back onto its side,

so she can double-check the measurements.

This is such a crucial dimension to us,

so I'm going to measure it again, really carefully.

It's the width of the skull on its frame

that she's most concerned about.

Will it be able to go through

the Natural History Museum's Grade I listed door?

So the width of this door is 1.79 metres,

and the skull on the frame is 1.93,

so that means that the skull is currently 14 centimetres too large

to fit in this door as it currently stands.

The blue whale was originally at our Mammal Hall,

which is over the other side of the museum,

and they had a whole separate set of doors

when they brought that in, in the 1930s.

To bring it into the hall, this is...

This front door is the only entrance.

It's end of January now and the skull comes in in mid-April,

so we haven't got too long to sort this out.

With the worry of the doorway hanging over her,

Jen has brought in her team of structural engineers

to double-check the rest of the measurements.

The old armature and the skeleton weighed about 4.8 tonnes.

We think that the weight in its new form

will be very, very similar.

But the weight of the skeleton isn't their major concern.

The biggest problem for us is not the steel that's been put in here,

it's what's back at the Natural History Museum,

which is the late Victorian wrought iron girders.

Adrian and his team have assessed the roof in detail

to identify the girders strong enough

to carry the weight of the whale.

Collapsing the Natural History Museum's roof

is not going to look good on anyone's CV.

It's like a tuning exercise.

By choosing the position very carefully,

we found that although we're adding 20% more load to the girder,

we'll actually only increase the stress by 2 or 3%.

With the structural engineers satisfied, Jen can start to relax.

It's looking really great. I just can't wait to see the final, final,

with the jawbones, with the mouth open and the flippers on.

So we're all kind of waiting for that moment, the final reveal.

Two weeks later, the whale is being packed up for her trip

back to the museum.

The skull will be travelling

in this specially designed wooden crate

that Jen hopes will solve her door problem.

Back at the museum, the scaffolding is around Dippy,

ready for him to be taken down.

Lorraine decides to start with her favourite part, the head.

Oh, good job.

Because Dippy is plaster and not a real skeleton,

he's less fragile and easier to manipulate than the whale.

But when the team reach his tail,

it seems Dippy doesn't want to leave after all,

because he starts to resist...

and Lorraine's trusty saw is required again.

Like a giant Airfix kit,

Dippy's bones have helpfully already been numbered.

Number five. Brilliant.

As Lorraine's favourite exhibit,

she can't help herself from cleaning him one last time.

Three weeks later, the beloved dinosaur has gone from Hintze Hall.

After being cleaned, fixed, and with a brand-new steel armature

to hold her together,

the whale is finally on her way back to the museum.

This is Jen's big day,

and she's counting on her newly designed crate

to fit through the museum's doors.

I'm nervous about today, it's fair to say.

The crate's as small as we can possibly make it,

so we really maximise our chances

of getting it back in through the front door.

But Lorraine isn't in any mood to help Jen put her mind at rest.

Maybe you should come up with another tape measure.

That's a bit harsh.

Maybe we should send Richard a message to say it won't fit through.

Oh, you're funny.

-It's not happening, Jen.

-Shall I send it back?

I think you need to, you know, come up and reassess the door.

LORRAINE LAUGHS

Probably post-whale conservation hysteria, do you think?

Yeah.

It's got here later in the day than we'd hoped,

so it could be a late one tonight.

It's the moment of truth for Jen.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

It's an incredibly tight fit...

We need to reverse again.

..with just a few centimetres to spare.

It's not that easy, even though it fits.

It takes two hours to push and pull this two-tonne crate into the hall.

It's a really big relief to have it in the building.

It's something we knew was going to be difficult

from the beginning of the project nearly two years ago,

and it's been a really long day and everyone's really tired,

but it's finally in now, as you can see, so it's great.

The next morning, piece by piece,

the rest of the giant skeleton arrives at the museum.

It's just a great feeling to finally get it in the space

and to start putting it together.

We've got to be ready for the whale to go up on Wednesday.

That's D-Day, everyone's booked in.

We've got quite a lot to do still in the next few days.

The pressure is on.

We have whale everywhere.

Yeah.

The team has just three days to rebuild the whale.

The biggest challenge is getting the vertebrae back onto the armature.

But for Lorraine,

watching these very precious bones

teetering five metres above the concrete floor

is getting a little bit too much.

When they were off-site, they had a lot more equipment

and so they're adapting to what equipment we've got here,

which is enough, actually,

but it just means they're adapting slightly.

With the last of the vertebrae safely in position,

there's just one thing left to do before the assembly is complete.

We've got much better handwriting, actually, than they had in 1934.

Much better. It's a better pencil.

I think we've done it proud.

The move has been a massive engineering challenge

and today is the day they've all be working towards -

the hoisting of Richard's whale into her final position.

Everything rests on it going well.

Any problem now could prevent the hall being ready

for the grand opening planned for the summer.

Our work is kind of over at this stage.

We've done all we can,

and so we just need to stand and watch the specimen going up.

It's a huge day for the whole team.

A lot of stress, sweat and tears

have gone towards getting to this moment.

And tensions are high.

Why are we doing this again?

THEY CHUCKLE

Did anyone stop to ask why?

-We should have asked that question.

-Two and a half years ago.

There's a lot of emotion going on, basically,

with the whole team because we've been waiting so long for this day

to happen and now the day has come.

There's lots of nerves, but good nerves, kind of an excitement.

Like it's Christmas, or it's your birthday, or something.

I'm probably going to burst into tears when it goes up.

I don't know. We'll see.

It's been a lot of long days in the last few weeks

getting to this point.

Jen has hired over 40 experts

to make sure this day goes as smoothly as possible.

Matt will be on hand to attach the mandibles

when the rest of the skeleton has been winched high enough

by the men in the rafters.

The structural engineers are back too.

A whale's meant to be in the water

and not the air.

What we've got here

is quite a complex task

of raising a fairly heavy skeleton

into a very accurate position.

So as soon as we identify there's a discrepancy in the tension

in either of the cables,

which means that one person's pulling harder than another,

we can inform that person and they are able to winch up a bit more

to make sure the load's balanced. That's the key.

Only seven metres stand between the whale

and what will hopefully be her final position.

Centimetre by centimetre, she rises towards the roof.

My butterflies are not...

My butterflies are not flying in formation today.

They are all over the place.

With everything going smoothly,

Jen's mind wanders to her party dress for the big opening event.

I've only got one dress, so you're going to have to work around me.

You're such a diva.

It's just it. It's just the only dress I have.

I too only have one dress.

-What colour's yours?

-Blue and white.

-Mine's blue. Mine's navy.

-Hey, mine too!

-Hey!

-Perfect.

But just when they thought they could relax...

..the skeleton starts to wobble.

Oh, dear.

Everything is moving.

Matt is worried that one of the team in the roof

might be hoisting too quickly.

He is doing too much of this.

What's happening is we're going right then left, right then left.

And when it swings in the middle, it's causing...

More rock and roll.

God, this is testing the armature, at least, isn't it?

And then...

BANG! CRACK!

What was the noise?

BANG! CRACK!

No-one is quite sure what that sharp cracking noise was,

but what they can agree on is that it wasn't good.

Any serious breakage would mean they'd have to bring

the whole skeleton all the way down again.

The team stop the hoisting to investigate what's gone wrong.

At last, they spot the problem.

A bolt in the steelwork has sheared

and two of the vertebrae have slightly separated as a result.

Fortunately, Matt's reinforcing pipe down the spinal column

has kept the whale in shape...

I can't believe that thing was hanging off of one bar before.

..though the vertebrae have slipped slightly.

So what we're going to do is create a stronger hinge there

and then weld in some heavier plate.

Luckily for Jen, the repairs can be done while it's still suspended.

Sorry, this might be the guy the welding.

It is. Can I just get this really quickly?

And she's wasted no time in getting the equipment

Brett is going to need.

I'm not sure... What's the kind of...?

What do you want? Arc?

-Shielded metal arc welding.

-Shielded metal arc welding.

Like most of us, Jen isn't an arc welding expert.

Does it have a canister of...

-A canister?

-Whatever makes the welding go hot.

-Don't put that in.

-Go hot!

Fortunately, Brett does know all about canistery things that get hot

and quickly gets to work repairing the hinge.

Hey, Brett. Bretty.

Can you send me a picture of the top and the bottom?

Do you think you can get a shot of it?

With both Adrian and Matt happy with the repair, the hoist can continue.

Well done, Brett.

This time, Matt is insisting that the team in the roof

hoist it much more slowly

to avoid any wobbling.

-Oh, that was...

-A lot.

-That was at least a centimetre.

Three metres and six hours later...

Oh, God, it's a bit like childbirth, isn't it? It goes on for hours.

..the whale is finally ready to be reunited with its mandibles.

Once those mandibles are attached,

it's going to be the thing that people see

when they come through these doors, they stand here,

they have this enormous creature diving down towards them

with that mouth open.

You know, they are the krill, as far as I'm concerned.

We're going to see that today for the first time.

I'm really excited about that.

That's hugging.

How to hug a mandible.

-That's a man in love with his job.

-I know.

That's the ICI Christmas card, right there.

With the mandibles attached,

the whale can be lifted the last few metres into her final resting place.

The party is back on schedule.

It looks like Jen's going to need that dress after all.

Look at that.

Isn't she amazing?

-I don't know...

-Look at the shadows.

..what I was expecting.

I don't know if I was expecting this. It looks incredible.

-It's glowing.

-Yeah.

It's amazing, isn't it?

Absolutely amazing.

This is just remarkable.

How do you feel, Richard? This is your pose, your idea.

-We've nailed it, haven't we?

-Yeah.

I mean, we've really, really nailed it.

We've got the dynamism, we've got the life, we've got the fluidity.

Everything that we tried to achieve, I think we've done it.

Every angle, everywhere you are in the space,

-she looks slightly different.

-Yes.

-And you get that pose.

When you start a project all those years ago

and then suddenly you get here

and you've got this beautiful creature

diving from the ceiling. It's kind of strange to look back.

I honestly feel that we've created something totally unique here.

It's something that I'm hoping will make people think

about what we've achieved as a species

by saving these animals from extinction,

and it's a message for the future.

We need to apply that same level of compassion and cooperation

to the rest of the planet.

-We're all in it together, basically, aren't we?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

126 years ago,

a female blue whale got into trouble off the coast of Ireland and died.

Before long, only her bones remained.

They eventually found their way

to the Natural History Museum in London.

Now, in the grand entrance hall,

she finally flies free.

The day of the dinosaur is over,

and the whale,

an animal that symbolises life on our blue planet today,

takes its place.

She is free to swim here forever,

to inspire a new generation about the wonders of the natural world,

and to remind us just how fragile it really is.