Found a large Bone

[MASS-Diver]

My buddy and recovered this in the Eastern Channel off Cohasset yestereday.

 

[ScubaSarus]

This is what diving is all about. You never know what you're going to encounter. Great find call a local college or somethig or possibly your local DEP and see if they are interested.

 

[reefguy04]

This is a section of whale vertebrae (backbone). Very cool. A nice dive trophy.

 

[archman]

Holy cow that's a big one. If it's not fossilized then it falls under the protection of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (yes, dead animal parts are included under this). Unless you "donate" it to the proper authorities lickety split, you may have the feds beating down the door. Take a bunch of photos of the thing and call/email the nearest natural history museum for instructions. Who knows, maybe they'll give you a permit to keep it. Something that cool doesn't deserve to be stashed away in some museuem basement anyhow.
**
new edit: register your very own hunk of dead whale within a month and you can keep the bloody thing... if it IS bloody you may have a harder time explaining it, ha ha.

 

[MASS-Diver]

deleted

 

[gfisher4792]

Excellent find! Congrats!

 

[archman]

Here's the "Big Rules" of the United States Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, amended several times, the last in 1992 I believe.

Prohibitions
16 U.S.C. 1372
Sec. 102. (a) [TAKING.] — Except as provided in sections 101, 103, 104, 109, 111, 113, 114, and 118 of this
title and title IV, it is unlawful—
(1) for any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States or any vessel or other conveyance subject
to the jurisdiction of the United States to take any marine mammal on the high seas;
(2) except as expressly provided for by an international treaty, convention, or agreement to which the
United States is a party and which was entered into before the effective date of this title or by any statute
implementing any such treaty, convention, or agreement—
(A) for any person or vessel or other conveyance to take any marine mammal in waters or on lands
under the jurisdiction of the United States; or
(B) for any person to use any port, harbor, or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States
to take or import marine mammals or marine mammal products; and
(3) for any person, with respect to any marine mammal taken in violation of this title, to possess that
mammal or any product from that mammal;
(4) for any person to transport, purchase, sell, export, or offer to purchase, sell, or export any marine
mammal or marine mammal product—
(A) that is taken in violation of this Act; or
(B) for any purpose other than public display, scientific research, or enhancing the survival of a
species or stock as provided for under subsection 104(c); and
(5) for any person to use, in a commercial fishery, any means or methods of fishing in contravention of
any regulations or limitations, issued by the Secretary for that fishery to achieve the purposes of this Act..

The way NMFS sees it, there's no easy way to prove that whale bones you found on the beach weren't directly cut out of some whale you whacked off yourself. Unless they're fossilized, of course (they sometimes make you prove THAT too, YUK!). And if you can't prove that the bones weren't from an animal you "took" from, you're in violation of section 102. I've had this lesson drilled into me by our resident marine mammal researchers since 1995... whoops 1993.
Every single dolphin, seal, whale, and even polar bear part we possess has to be permitted. It's really rather tedious, hence the preference for our teaching loans to be fossilized specimens. You can walk around bold as brass with those things, provided you aren't tracked down by the paleontologists. They have their own permitting guidelines I've heard, don't have the particulars however.

 

[MASS-Diver]

gone

 

[MASS-Diver]

all gone

 

[archman]

your bone must be registered. I dare say you or your pop has this well in hand already. Once registered, your item is given a PERMIT. You must have a permit, or you're in violation. From a great deal of experience I am sad to say that very few people permit their animal parts, therefore they're not entitled to retain them. Within our collections we have many instances of "family heirlooms" that were seized by the feds from households 'cuz they lacked any documentation. Not their finest hour, but true to the law.

I am unaware of section 102 only applying to individuals at sea. Our labs refer to it for personnel on beaches. If you do happen to know that it definitely applies to maritime instances exclusively, I would be very receptive to another quote or link showing that. By the way could you link the site where you got CFR 18.26 from? I need to save that on file.