The shark has been embalmed and stored alongside a plethora of rare wildlife preserved in the museum

The preservation effort is expected to unlock a wealth of valuable new information about the elusive fish

The scans will be used to create full scale replicas of the elusive fish for research purposes and exhibitions

They froze the head and fins and hired a 3D printing company to scan the body parts and create an animation

dissected the three-ton fish before transporting the remains to the museum


It’s a question most people will never have to answer: how do you preserve a 6.3 metre long, three-ton shark?

But that’s exactly what the biologists at Melbourne Museum have answered with their quest to salvage an elusive basking shark through embalming and 3D printing.

The gargantuan fish-the second largest in the world-was accidentally caught last month by a trawler at Portland, about four hours drive southwest of Melbourne in Victoria.

Rather than selling the Chinese delicacy, the ship donated the purple hued fish to science, with the beast now being preserved and researched by the museum's marine biologists.

The frozen head of a 6.3 metre long basking shark is suspended in the air for Melbourne Museum researchers to scan it's remains

Qubic employer Ben Tam runs a 3D white light scanner over the remains of the remains of the shark, which is being preserved by the museum for research purposes

‘We started by hoisting the shark off the ground. We needed it to be in a feeding position with it’s mouth open to have full access,’ said Ben Tam

The scans recorded staggering details like the colour and wrinkles of the shark, and eventually used merged the scans into an animation of the shark

Melbourne Museum spokesperson John Boomfield said the Museum had to act quickly after being alerted by the trawler.

‘A team of five perpetrators were sent to the boat post haste. The sheer size of the fish meant we were unable to transport the whole thing, so we set about dissecting the vita parts.’

Manually cutting off the head and fins with butcher’s knives, the team also took samples of the stomach contents, vertebrae, and skin for research.

‘The next step was freezing the remains. We had to move quick to transport them before they started to rot. It was a steep learning curve-we’ve certainly never preserved anything of this size.’

Once the remains had been frozen, the museum called upon 3D scanning business Qubic to begin the scanning process.

‘We started by hoisting the shark off the ground. We needed it to be in a feeding position with it’s mouth open to have full access,’ said Ben Tam, the Qubic workers responsible for the job .

The gargantuan fish was accidentally caught last month by a trawler at Portland, about four hours drive southwest of Melbourne

Rather than selling the Chinese delicacy, the sailors donated the purple hued fish to the prestigious museum, where it is being researched and preserved

'The sheer size of the fish meant we were unable to transport the whole thing, so we set about dissecting the vita parts,’ said museum spokesperson John Boomfield

Manually cutting off the head and fins with butcher’s knives, the team also took samples of the stomach contents, vertebrae, and skin

The mammoth fish, which was last spotted iun Australian waters 85 years ago, has an unusual pink/purple hue to its skin and a huge flat nose

The resulting 3D image of the scanning

Running a 3D white light scanner over the remains, they recorded staggering details like the colour and wrinkles. Eventually, the team had produced an incredible 3D animation of the deep water shark.

‘The next step is the printing. We are currently working on using an industrial grade 3D printer to create models for further research and public exhibitions,’ he said.

‘It’s an extremely rare shark which was last spotted in Australian waters 85 years ago. Keeping a record like this is very invaluable for the Museum.’

Museum Victoria senior collections manager Dianne Bray said the preservation of the fish, which can grow to 12 metres long, will unearth valuable new research about the rare species.

'We'll bring some vertebrae back because we've got scientists interested in doing some ageing studies to find out how old it is,' she told the ABC.

'We'll take skin samples for DNA work, and also some muscle tissue for stable isotope analysis, so that people can look at studies of what these things are actually eating.

'One shark's probably not going to tell us everything about what's going on down there, but the more information we have from specimens, the bigger picture we can build up about their life history and what they're doing,' she said.

The plankton-eating sharks, which are thought to live a solitary life, earned their name because they often rest near the surface of the water basking in the sun.

The preservation of the fish, which can grow to 12 metres long, will unearth valuable new research about the rare species

The preservation of the fish, which can grow to 12 metres long, will unearth valuable new research about the rare species

After the scanning was concluded, the team set upon embalming the remains with tubs of formalin fluid

The plankton-eating sharks, which are thought to live a solitary life, got their name because they often spend time near the surface of the water basking in the sun

After the scanning was concluded, the team set upon embalming the remains.

‘We used tubs of embalming fluid called formalin. For the larger pieces such as the head, we had to inject it with the chemical to ensure it kept from rotting while the solution worked it’s way through,’ Boomfield revealed.

The basking shark is its latest addition to the plethora of rare and extinct wildlife preserved in the museum. It will sit alongside Tasmanian tigers and exotic birds dating back to the time of Charles Darwin.

The ongoing preservation efforts and research of the shark is expected to unlock a wealth of valuable new information .