THE DAYS OF PEAK WHALE
Whale-hunting is more modern than you might think
Sailing ships... exhausted men fighting epic battles... unknown beasts from within...
Those things actually happened.
For thousands of years, humans hunted whales close to shore using nets, spears and harpoon. It was a haphazard affair.
It was when people started using whale oil for lamps (it didn't stink like tallow) that whaling became big business.
Ships armed with hand-thrown harpoons would go to sea for years at a time. The whalemeat was boiled on board – see the smoke in this 1856 illustration – and the oil would be stored in barrels until they returned to port.
By 1900, whale oil had been replaced by cheap kerosene, petroleum, and paraffin. But Big Whaling was only just warming up. With steamships and mechanised harpoons, the killing became industrialised.
By the middle of the last century, tens of thousands of whales were being caught each year – Minke, fin, sei, grey, blue, humpbacks and sperm whales.
Machine oil, soap, pet food, buttons, fertiliser – there was nothing whale oil couldn't be used for.
The 1960s was peak kill time. As many whales were killed from 1900-1962 as had been killed in the entire 18th and 19th centuries
But that was nothing. In just the 10 years to 1972, that tally was matched again.
Ten years to kill as many whales with explosive harpoons as it had taken two hundred years to kill by hand.
Whaling still goes on today (we're looking at you, Norway and Japan), but the International Whaling Commission voted in 1982 for a moratorium. It came after a decade of campaigning – sparked by increasing awareness about the risk of extinction and greater understanding about marine mammals.
In 1970, an album Songs of the Humpback Whale made people aware for the first time about communication between whales. "Save the Whale" became a rally cry around the world.
But it's going to take a long time for numbers to recover.
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