JAY – A black and white, silky nylon type material stretched over a portion of the gym floor took shape as a humpback whale as air filled it.
Within a minute after a fan was turned on, the whale’s white flippers expanded across the floor and sensors on the top of its nose and mouth area protruded, and signs of the white ventral pleats on the front lower portion came into view.
It was a replica of Istar, a female whale that visits the coast of New Hampshire, Maine and Canada annually beginning in the spring. During the winter months it returns to warmer water in the Caribbean to mate and have babies.
Istar’s name means Goddess of Fertility, said Melanie White, a representative of the Children’s Museum in Portland. Istar has the most calves and grandchildren of the humpback whales in the North Atlantic.
White was visiting the Jay Middle School on Monday to teach fifth-graders about Istar.
The replica used to hang from the museum’s ceiling but now goes on tour to visit schools in effort to teach children about the whale, which was born in 1972, weighing 1,500 pounds and measuring 15 feet long. Now she is 33 years old, 45 feet long and weighing 60,000 pounds.
Istar is about halfway through her life expectancy as a whale, which is 60 years, White told students in Shannon Hussey Cuthbertson’s and Teresa Schmidt’s classes as they sat on the floor in front of her.
White told the children that whales have birth certificates along with a picture of the mammal’s fluke – otherwise known as a tail.
Each whale’s fluke is different, White said.
Each whale is also numbered, she said. Istar is No. 80.
The first year of Istar’s life, White said, she stayed near her mother because she needed about 130 gallons of milk a day.
The humpback whale grows about 100 pounds a day, or 4 pounds an hour, she said.
This species has a throat as big as a grapefruit and no teeth. Instead, it has baleen plates that hang from the upper jaw of the whale and are used to trap the food, which in Istar’s case is krill, shrimp-like crustaceans.
Istar eats about a ton a food a day – which is equal to about one million calories – during most months, White said, but doesn’t eat when it’s in warmer water, living off a stored layer of fat.
Children had a chance to measure the mammal, which is longer than a school bus.
Those measuring it described the replica as “huge.”
White also unzipped a panel in the whale and brought the students inside to teach them about the different parts.
“That thing is awesome,” Kendra Page said as she came out. “It’s awesome.”
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