TRENTON (AP) – A Down East museum hopes to display the skeleton of a 46-foot sperm whale that was found floating in the Gulf of Maine.

Marine biologists and researchers were excited by the discovery of the 80,000-pound male whale because the massive, deep-diving sperm whales tend to avoid coastal regions and they’re not normally seen in Maine.

The whale, which had been dead for about a month, was spotted off Outer Heron Island, near Boothbay Harbor, said Toby Stephenson, curator of the Bar Harbor Whale Museum, which hopes to display the bones.

Scientists motored down the coast in a whale-watching boat, had a diver hook a length of rope around the leviathan’s jaw and slowly towed it back to Bar Harbor.

From there, it was brought to the town landing in Tremont for butchering.

Twenty volunteers cut away the meat and fat on Tuesday and readied the tons of flesh to be composted at a site in Tremont.

The carcass was so big and oily that volunteers had to comply with environmental regulations while butchering it.

The Trenton Volunteer Fire Department helped place oil-absorbing pads in the water, and a contractor used an excavator to pull the whale up over the high-water mark, said Mark King of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The state Department of Marine Resources has called for closing the boat ramp for a week because of water-quality concerns, King said.

Sperm whales are the largest toothed whales, and the deepest-diving.

They can plunge up to two miles into the ocean in the quest for their primary prey, giant squid.

A group of third-graders from Calvary Chapel Christian School in Orrington had heard about the whale and made an impromptu field trip to check it out.

“I think it’s exciting to see a dead whale,” said Orianna Green, 8, of Brewer.

She added, “I would like to see a not-dead one.”