Museum collections all around the world document and preserve records representing our knowledge about the natural world. Collections from polar latitudes are rare, given the difficulties of obtaining objects and the relatively low collecting effort compared with many centuries of work at lower latitudes.
Ocean giants such as whales use highly productive polar waters for feeding; it has been proposed that ancient ocean giants, including Mesozoic marine reptiles, used polar waters in similar ways in the geologic past. For both whales and Mesozoic marine reptiles, collecting their skeletal or tissue remains is challenging -- they are difficult to obtain, manipulate, move, and store. The value of these collections is thus very high because they are rare, and unlikely to be replicated.
The scientific insights from ocean giants at polar latitudes is important because these organisms play an outsized ecological role in ocean ecosystems. Preserving the lineages that survive today, despite centuries of human hunting, will be important for ocean and human health during the Anthropocene -- and especially given the accelerating rate of climate change at the poles.