ESTIMATES OF THE LANDED CATCH OF RIGHT (AND OTHER 

 WHALEBONE) WHALES IN THE AMERICAN FISHERY, 1805-1909 



Peter B. Best' 



ABSTRACT 



Using a combination of the numbers of'bowhead, right, humpback, and gray whales listed for partic- 

 ular voyages by C. H. Tovvnsend, and the declared returns of whale oil and whalebone from the same 

 voyages as listed by A. Starbuck and R. B. Hegarty, mean oil and whalebone yields per whale are 

 calculated and temporal trends in these yields investigated for each species. These are then used to 

 obtain an e.stimate of the total landed catch for each 5-year period from 1805 to 1909, using the species 

 composition from Townsend's lists and adjusting it upwards from the ratio of oil or bone production 

 for Townsend's sample to the total known importation of these products to the United States for the 

 same period. An alternative estimate is based on the catch per voyage in Townsend's sample, strat- 

 ified by voyage-type (sperm, whalebone, or mixed), and prorated up by the number of whaling voyages 

 of the same type as listed by Starbuck and Hegarty. The two methods produced estimates of the 

 landed catch by American-registered vessels between 1805 and 1909 of 29,748-30,313 bowhead, 

 70.325-74.693 right. 14.164-18.212 humpback, and 2,665-3.013 gray whales. 



Between 1715 and 1928, whaling vessels from 

 American ports are estimated to have made 

 13.927 voyages, mostly under sail, in their world- 

 wide pursuit of oil and whalebone (Sherman 

 1965). In 1846, at the peak of the fishery, the 

 American whaling fleet comprised over 735 ves- 

 sels displacing 233,189 tons (Hohman 1928). Be- 

 cause of the essentially unregulated and competi- 

 tive nature of the enterprise, no systematic 

 recording or collection of catch statistics was ever 

 initiated for this very extensive fishery. 



In 1875. Alexander Starbuck began to compile 

 a list of the returns of whaling vessels from Amer- 

 ican ports from 1715, a task continued to the end 

 of the fishery in 1928 by Hegarty (1959). These 

 publications list for each voyage the vessel's 

 name, class, tonnage, captain, managing owner 

 or agent, destination, dates of sailing and arrival, 

 and the results of the voyage in barrels of sperm 

 or whale oil and pounds of whalebone. Numbers 

 of whales taken are not given, but this did not 

 prevent Starbuck (1878) from making his own 

 calculations. In a footnote to his table J, which 

 listed quantities of oil and whalebone imported 

 into the United States from 1804 to 1876, Star- 

 buck stated that 



Scammon estimate.s that sperm whales will average 



'Mammal Research Institute. University of Pretoria. South 

 .•\frica; mailing address: South African Museum. P.O. Box 61. 

 Cape Town, 8000 South Africa. 



25 and right whales 60 barrels of oil, and of the former 

 10 and of the latter 20 per cent of those killed are lost. 

 Upon that basis the above amounts of oil would repre- 

 .sent the slaughter of 225,521 sperm, and 193,522 right 

 whales. 



The latter figure has frequently been quoted as 

 representing the size of the historical take of 

 right whales (sometimes incorrectly for the period 

 1804 to 1817, an error apparently originally per- 

 petrated by Harmer 1 1928], who also inferred that 

 the entire take was of southern right whales). It 

 is clear however that the landings of oil not only 

 included production from both northern and 

 southern right whales, but also from bowhead, 

 humpback, and gray whales, species for which 

 Starbuck (1878) made no allowance in his origi- 

 nal calculation. 



In this paper, an attempt has been made to 

 revise Starbuck's calculations to account for the 

 species composition of the catch, to extend his 

 analysis forward in time using importation fig- 

 ures provided by Hegarty (1959), and to use 

 whalebone as well as oil production. An indepen- 

 dent method of estimating the landed catch using 

 the catch per voyage has also been developed. 



The motivation for this paper arose from the 

 International Whaling Commission meeting on 

 the past and present status of right whales, held 

 in Boston m 1983, where the need for an improved 

 estimate of the size of the American catch of right 

 whales became apparent (Brownell et al. 1986). 



Manuscript accepted 



FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 85. NO ,3. 1987 



403 



