Dead Bowhead Whale
     The earliest records of whaling,during the 2nd century, come from excavated sites in Japan where carvings have been found depicting primitive whaling.  Commercial whaling began in 1000 a.d. with the Basques along the coasts of France and Spain.  They used primitive row-boats and hand-held harpoons.  They killed slow moving right whales that were found near shore.  The whalers named them "right" whales because they were the "right whale to kill".  They had the most blubber, did not sink when they were killed, were slow moving, and had extremely long baleen. 

Right Whale
     Whaling became an important industry because of the demand for whale oil, which was used for lantern fuel before electricity was invented. The blubber was stripped off the whale and boiled down to oil. By the 1500s, the Basques had killed off most of the right whales on the European coasts and ventured across the Atlantic in search of more prey. The peak period of Basque whaling in the New World was 1560-1570. A five month whaling season produced as much as half million gallons of whale oil. Colonists continued whaling during the 1700s.  By the 1750s, the right and bowhead were near extinction and the gray whale was already extinct on the Atlantic Coast.  By 1770, Yankee whalers off Nantucket and New Bedford turned their attention to the sperm whales that were found farther offshore.  The sperm whales are deep divers and can stay submerged for more than an hour making them more difficult to hunt. The peak time of Yankee whaling was from 1800-1860.In 1848, the toggle harpoon was developed which allowed the barbed head of the harpoon to pivot as the whale dove,hooking the harpoon firmly into the flesh.  The development of the bomb lance in 1865, ended the era of the hand-held harpoon.

Hand-Held Harpoon
This hand-held gun fired a projectile that exploded in the blubber of the whale eight seconds after being shot.  Both of these innovations brought about more efficient killing of whales. 
    In 1850, whaling on the Pacific Coast increased.  The California gray whale (coastal species) that breeds in shallow water lagoons off the Baja Coast,was the main species hunted.  Due to hunters locating their breeding lagoon location, by 1880, this whale was endanger of extinction.
     There were three important historical events between 1848 and 1860 that caused the decline of Yankee whaling and may have ultimately saved several species of whales from extinction.
     1) The discovery of gold in 1848 lured entire whaling crews from ships that stopped in 
        San Francisco to "strike it rich".
     2) In 1859, the discovery of petroleum and development of kerosene provided a new and less 
        expensive lighting fuel than whale oil.
     3) During the Civil War, the Confederacy sunk more than 86 whaling ships. 
Corset
     In the 1860s, the Pacific bowhead whale was hunted by whalers for its long baleen.  It would measure up to 14 feet in length.  The baleen was split and used for supports in women's dresses and corsets.  It is a whale only found in the Arctic.  By 1900, the Alaskan bowhead was close to extinction. When a substitute for baleen was invented (spring steel), the price of baleen for women's corsets and dresses dropped from five dollars a pound to fifty cents a pound.  When the price of baleen dropped, the whalers stopped coming to hunt in Alaska and the few remaining bowheads were saved from extinction.Up until 1880, there was one family of whales that was virtually unharmed by the onslaught of death,the Balaenopteridai, which includes the blue and fin  whales. They were too large, too fast, and they sank when killed. In 1890, a Norwegian whaler named Sven Foyn changed their fate. He used a faster steam-driven vessel that had a cannon-like harpoon mounted on the bow.
Cannon-like Harpoon 
   When a whale was killed, a long tube was pushed into the body cavity of the animal,and compressed air was pumped into it to keep the whale afloat.  With this invention, the blue and fin whales became part of the slaughter.    In 1900, Antarctica was discovered to be the greatest whaling grounds in the world. It had thousands of blue, fin, and humpback whales that had never been hunted.  The year 1925 saw the development of the factory ship.   Whalers modified the stern (rear of a ship) with a ramp so that a whale could be dragged onto the deck with a winch and flensed (cut up in pieces). 

Ramp on factory ship
The dead whales were towed by the catcher boats back to the factory ship to be processed. With the development of the factory ship, whalers could go anywhere in the open sea to hunt whales.  In the Antarctic, from 1925-1935, there was the greatest slaughter of whales that had ever occurred. Some 40,000 were killed in 1931 alone, 29,000 of which were blue whales. Catcher boats with cannon harpoons were mounted on the bow and were used to kill the whales.
     In 1929, the first whale protection law was passed.  It prohibited all hunting of right whales.  In 1936, a similar law protected the grays.  This was passed just in time since the Pacific gray whale population had declined to a dangerous low of only 4,000.  Whalers all over the world realized that their industry was in danger of collapsing.  In an effort to regulate the number of whales killed, they established the International Whaling Commission in 1946.  It took more than ten years for the International Whaling Commission to pass a resolution protecting the blue whale.  This finally happened in 1965,  when the blue whale numbers were so low that the whalers could no longer find any to kill.  In 1976, hunting of fin whales in Antarctic was banned. 

Jojoba Plant
      In 1971, the United States government banned all imports of sperm whale products, which led to a suitable substitute.  Researchers discovered that the seed of the jojoba plant, Simmondsia chinensis, produced a liquid wax or oil almost identical chemically to sperm whale oil. 1978,hunting of sei whales in Antarctic is banned.  In 1970s, people started thinking differently about the whales with the production of Roger Payne's recording, Songs of the Humpback Whale. People began to see whales as animals with feelings and sensitivity. 
      Greenpeace, a conservation organization, began following whalers on the open sea and disturbed their whaling operations.  School children wrote letters to Congress urging them to protect whales and ban all whale hunting in the United States.  In 1972, the United States became the first country in the world to protect all whales, dolphins, and seals.  However, whales were dying in other parts of the world.  Over the next ten years, many other countries passed similar laws.  In 1986, worldwide ban on whaling was passed by the International Whaling Commission.  As of 1995, three countries, Japan, Iceland, and Norway, have not agreed to the ban on whaling.  They continue what they call "scientific whaling" on the smallest of baleen whales, the minke.  Minkes had never been hunted previously since they are so small.  The highly suspect "scientific whaling" apparently involves making a few measurements before the whales are processed for human consumption.

Whale Baleen
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