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The iconic blue whale at The American Museum of Natural History in New York is undergoing its annual cleaning. The entire body of the 94-foot-long whale undergoes a "dusting" every nine months and "then every six months, we'll do the face and the head," Trenton Duerksen, Senior Exhibition Maintenance Manager for the Museum, said. While the exhibit is protected inside the Museum, "dust gets in the air and eventually settles on the whale," Dean Markosian, Director, in the museum's Exhibition Department, said. Duerksen wears a backpack vacuum with a HEPA filter and uses long-handled brushes to remove dust from the whale's life-size body. The whole job takes a day and half. "Mostly I use the the broad flat brush for the surface of the whale but then in with when the contour in certain contours around the face and head and the blowhole and things like that, I use the round brush because it gets in its contours better," Duerksen said. The whale was first installed in 1969 an is the largest model of the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth, according to the Museum. The blue whale is made of fiberglass and polyurethane and weighs 21,000 pounds. The hardest part of the job, according to Duerksen, is maneuvering the lift around the whale. It can be "a little disorienting once you get above 20 feet," Duerksen pointed out. "It's very important not to hit the object... and when you get really high in the air, it (the lift) also sways back and forth so you have to allow for a certain tolerance and in movement and still be able to get close enough to clean it," Duerksen said. The whale is suspended by a large steel pipe connecting the skeleton to the ceiling of the Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life.

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