Tim Holt, curator of Teän Collection, started collecting marine mammal specimens from the UK coastline as a teenager and has pursued it with passion ever since. Beginning in 1982 on a beach in the Isles of Scilly, the Teän Collection continues to increase in volume, range and momentum. Since that day on Teän in the summer of 1982, Holt has fitted in a career in academic general practice and a rapidly developing interest in astrophotography.

The original skeleton from Teän was a pilot whale, two thirds intact when found, and retrieved with help from the Isles of Scilly potter, Humphrey Wakefield. Completing it required remnants from the uninhabited Shetland island of Hascosay, thanks to local naturalist, Bobby Tulloch; two separate contributions from a stranding of pilot whales on Freiston Shore, Lincolnshire, with some incidental help from a group of Cambridge zoologists; and a cervical vertebra section possibly originating from a mass stranding of over 90 animals on Holland Bay, Stronsay, in Orkney in April 1950. This was retrieved by Tim from nearby Rothiesholm Head over 30 years after this event.

Also included in the collection and among the largest structures, the partial skeleton of a sperm whale was found stranded on Islay in the Inner Hebrides in 1984. Initially whole, later scattered across the beach it was retrieved with permission from the Natural History Museum.

Inspiring Tim’s endeavours is a belief in the artistic, as well as scientific lessons, that the internal structures of large mammals can teach us about ourselves, our history and our place in nature. In the case of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), these include the extraordinary adaptations of this group to the marine environment. Their land-living ancestors gradually took to the sea, losing their hind limbs, and finally committing totally by giving birth under water.