TROUBLED WATERS - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

6
A REVIEW OF THE WELFARE IMPLICATIONS OF MODERN WHALING ACTIVITIES
2 A background to whaling
Philippa Brakes, Marine Consultant, c/o WDCS (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society),
Chippenham, UK.
An introduction to the history of whaling
In the age of modern technology and communication, it is difficult to imagine the lives of the earliest
whalers, or the perils that they faced setting sail into unknown waters in search of their quarry.
Humans from many regions of the globe have long been exploiting cetaceans (whales, dolphins and
porpoises) for the food, oil and ‘whale bone’ (baleen) they yield. Some aboriginal peoples, such as the
Inuit, of Greenland, arctic Asia and North America have an extensive history of whaling. Even
Neolithic people from the coast of Denmark, are believed to have consumed cetaceans as a
supplement to their predominately shellfish diet, through opportunistic takes of stranded cetaceans
(Harrison 1988). As far back as 1100 BC, it is believed that the Phoenicians operated shore-based
whaling for sperm whales in the eastern Mediterranean (Sanderson 1956). However, it was not until
the 1600s that the true ‘industry’ of whaling, as we now know it, began to evolve. By this time, the
pursuit of whales was being executed beyond the reach of coastal communities and out into the deepsea
regions. Long range whaling was first undertaken by the Basque whalers, who had been catching
northern right whales in the Bay of Biscay since the early 1100s.
By the 1700s the Basques were travelling across the Atlantic to exploit the concentrations of whales
found around the Grand Bank area of Westfoundland and the English, Dutch and Germans were
exploiting the right whales they had discovered around the coast of Greenland. The most popular
method for catching whales at this time was to harpoon the animals with a multi-barbed harpoon
from a small catcher boat. The whale was then ‘played’ on the rope attached to the harpoon, which
was slowly fed out as the whale attempted to escape. The aim was to exhaust the injured whale and
then, as the opportunity arose, further wound it using a hand thrown lance. The lance was tipped
with sharp blades, which were designed to sever a major blood vessel and induce death through
blood loss.
The advent of ship based ‘tryworks’ (brick ovens in which blubber could be rendered into valuable
oil) during the 1760s, increased the economic efficiency of whaling operations and intensive
exploitation proliferated across the globe during the following centuries, as various whale populations
were discovered and utilised. It was not until the 1870s that it became possible to exploit the faster
moving rorqual whales, such as the blue, fin and sei whales. This was brought about by the almost
simultaneous advent of the motorised whale catcher and an explosive harpoon that could be fired
from a cannon.
These innovations facilitated the exploitation of the dense numbers of whales that occurred in the
Antarctic, due to the springtime bloom in productivity in this region. These first forays into
Antarctica were led by the British and Norwegians but, by the 1930s, the Japanese and Germans
were also whaling in Antarctica. The advent of more efficient means of catching whales brought