WHALING FACTS

Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable

products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a
type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial
Revolution.

People have been whaling for thousands of years.

Early depictions of whaling at the Neolithic Bangudae

site in Korea, unearthed by researchers from Kyungpook
National University, may date back to 6000 BC.

Norwegians were among the first to hunt whales, as early

as 4,000 years ago. The Japanese may have been doing
so even earlier.
The oldest known method of catching cetaceans is dolphin
drive hunting, in which a number of small boats are positioned
between the animal and the open sea and the animals are
herded towards shore in an attempt to beach them.

Another early method used a drogue (a semi-floating object)

such as a wooden drum or an inflated sealskin tied to an arrow
or a harpoon. Once the missile had been shot into a whale’s
body, the buoyancy and drag from the drogue would eventually
cause the whale to tire, allowing it to be approached and killed.

Nearly every part of the whale was used. Meat, skin, blubber,
and organs were eaten as an important source of protein, fats,
vitamins, and minerals. Baleen was woven into baskets and
used as fishing line. In warmer climates, baleen was also used
as a roofing material. Bones were used primarily for toolmaking
and carving ceremonial items such as masks.
Whale bones recovered near the Strait of Gibraltar raise the
possibility that whales were hunted in the Mediterranean Sea
by ancient Rome.

Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early

as 875 AD.

In Europe, the Nordic people hunted small whales, and

Icelandic laws dealt with whaling in the 13th century.

The forerunners of commercial whaling were the Basques, who

caught northern right whales as the animals gathered to breed
in the Bay of Biscay. When seaworthy oceangoing ships were
built, the Basques set off in search of other bays where whales
congregated. They found them across the Atlantic off the coast
of southern Labrador.
Drafting Basque whalers for its Arctic explorations, the English
Muscovy Company initiated the exploitation of whaling bays in
Spitsbergen, Norway, in 1610. The Dutch followed immediately
and broke the English monopoly, which had already stifled
native competition. Smeerenburg (“Blubbertown”), a Dutch
whaling village, was built on Spitsbergen after 1619.
Smeerenburg shut down in the 1660s, and Dutch and German
whalers navigated the open sea until their activity collapsed in
the 1780s. At that point Britain, in order to support its industrial
revolution, took over as the principal European whaling nation.
During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the chief vessels used
to capture whales were merchant ships. They were reinforced
with beams against sea ice and were heavily armed against
attack. American whaling ships were initially smaller than British
vessels and were painted to look like warships. During the 19th
century larger ships built specifically for whaling became more
common. In the 1850s clipper ships gained favor.

Beginning in the late colonial period, the United States grew to

become the preeminent whaling nation in the world by the
1830s. American whaling’s origins were in New York and New
England, including Cape Cod, Massachusetts and nearby cities.
Whale oil was in demand chiefly for lamps. By the 18th century
whaling in Nantucket had become a highly lucrative deep-sea
industry, with voyages extending for years at a time and
traveling as far as South Pacific waters.

Whale oil was essential for illuminating homes and businesses

in the 19th century, and lubricated the machines of the
Industrial Revolution. Baleen (the long keratin strips that hang
from the top of whales’ mouths) was used by manufacturers in
the United States and Europe to make varied consumer goods.
In the late 19th century the whaling industry was transformed
by the development of steam powered ships, enabling the
hunting of faster blue and fin whales, and of the explosive
harpoon, enabling further reach and increased accuracy. The
new technology, coupled with the depletion of whales in the rest
of the world, led to the spread of hunting to the Antarctic, where
huge concentrations of feeding whales made large-scale
whaling highly profitable.

The First World War provided a large market for explosives

using glycerine from baleen whale oil provided by British and
Norwegian whaling in the Antarctic. Meanwhile Japanese
whaling had developed separately as a coastal industry, mainly
for humpback, right and grey whales.

Commercial whaling dramatically reduced in importance

during the 19th century due to the development of alternatives
to whale oil for lighting, and the collapse in whale populations.
The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led to
the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969, and to
a worldwide cessation of whaling as an industry in the late
1980s.

Contemporary whaling is subject to intense debate. Canada,

Iceland, Japan, Norway, Russia, South Korea, the United
States and the Danish dependencies of the Faroe Islands and
Greenland continue to hunt in the 21st century.

Over the past few decades, whale watching has become a

significant industry in many parts of the world – in some
countries, it has replaced whaling, but in a few others, the two
business models exist in an uneasy tension.

Over a thousand whales are killed every year because some

people want to make money from selling their meat and body
parts. Their oil, blubber and cartilage are used in
pharmaceuticals and health supplements. Whale meat is even
used in pet food, or served to tourists as a 'traditional dish'.