Rare whale jawbone fished out of Oosterschelder came from Amsterdam museum
A rare whale jawbone fished out of the Oosterschelde a year ago has been identified as belonging to a closed museum in Amsterdam, the diver who found the bone discovered. It ended up in the water in a series of questionable choices, diver Bas van der Sanden told the newspaper PZC.
Van der Sanden found the nearly 3-meter-long piece of jawbone near the Zeeland Bridge in February 2025. He initially thought it was the jaw of a fin whale, which may have braved the Oosterscheldekering storm surge barrier. But closer inspection made him increasingly suspicious.
The bones were white and clean, something that shouldn’t be possible for bones that had been underwater for a long time. When he started preserving the bone, he found it had already been preserved. And when DNA testing revealed that the bone was not from a common fin whale, but an Omura’s whale - a species not found anywhere near the Netherlands - alarm bells went off, Van der Sanden told the newspaper.
The truth eventually came to light when a museum employee contacted Van der Sanden after he gave a lecture about this mystery at a diving expo. The jawbone turned out to have come from the Zoological Museum Amsterdam, which closed in 2011.
The museum had donated its bones to the Naturalis museum, but the Naturalis was not interested in the fine whale jawbones and ordered their removal, the employee explained. The museum employee thought this was a waste and took them home. But when he moved, he no longer had room for the enormous bone. And he couldn’t return it to a museum because he did not have the official paperwork.
The museum employee and a colleague then came up with a plan to dump the bone in the water somewhere where it would definitely be found. This way, it would again get official paperwork after being recovered.
The story was so unlikely that Van der Sanden had to laugh, he told PZC. “Strictly speaking, no criminal offenses were committed. It wasn’t theft,” he told the newspaper. But it was a series of misjudgements. “In the museum world, this will be met with a punitive, ‘Shame on you!’ Said with a smile, of course.”
