TIGNISH, Prince Edward Island, May 19 (UPI) -- Crews from two Canadian universities have disassembled a whale carcass that washed up on a Prince Edward Island beach two decades ago, residents said.

Pathologists from the University of Prince Edward Island and the University of British Columbia dug up the carcass, stripped the skeleton of rotting flesh and muscle and removed each massive bone from the site, The Globe and Mail reported Monday.

The skeleton is bound for the University of British Columbia's Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver, where it will be reassembled.

The spectacle of the teams disassembling the massive blue whale corpse drew a crowd of locals.

"I think that the size of this is unbelievable; one vertebra is bigger than a man's torso," said Lesley Dubey, who recalled seeing the whale when it washed ashore in 1987.