CHAPTER 33 



The Whaling Industry 

 Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises 



By Raymond M. Gilmore 

 Research Biologist, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service 



History 



The first great whaling nation of the world was England, closely followed by 

 Holland. Both countries utilized the early techniques of the Basque whaler, who 

 had been whaling on a small scale since about 1200 a.d. In the 17th and 18th cen- 

 turies the English and Dutch caught right and bowhead whales successively from 

 Spain to Spitzbergen to Greenland to Hudson Bay. Meanwhile, the Yankees of 

 New England had started searching for right and bowhead whales, but they soon 

 transferred their attention to the sperm whale which they pursued to all parts 

 of the globe in competition with a few English boats. In 1846 746 whaling ships, 

 with an aggregate capacity of 233,189 tons and a value of $21,075,000, were 

 registered from American ports (mostly New England). The foreign fleet at 

 this time numbered 230 vessels (Starbuck, 1878, and Scammon, 1874). With 

 the growing scarcity of the sperm whale and the advent of petroleum the sperm 

 and baleen whale fishery declined; but the fantastic price of baleen (whalebone) at 

 $5.00 and even $7.00 a pound kept ships out after the few surviving right and bow- 

 head whales. When the Norwegians began to utilize the powder harpoon-cannon 

 and steamship and winch in the 1860's, whaling became an extremely efficient and 

 profitable industry. The Norwegians have inherited the leadership in whaling from 

 the. Americans and Basques, and they now supply ships, gear, and men to the 

 rest of the world. The English also have extensive whaling operations, and the 

 Dutch and Russians have entered the field. The Japanese and Germans expanded 

 their industries in the 1930's, and the former are still important whalers. The 

 United States is scarcely to be considered a whaling nation, being represented by 

 only one shore station on the West Coast, which operated from 1947 through 1949. 

 Expensive labor, availability of cheap vegetable oils, and the lack of demand for 

 whale meat tend to prevent any expansion of American whaling. However, for the 

 past few years a large firm has chartered a British ship for sperm whaling off 

 Peru and imported great quantities of sperm oil into the United States. 



Classification of Cetacea 



Whales, dolphins, and porpoises are members of an order of mammals, the 

 Cetacea. They are not fish, though all are entirely aquatic and most are marine. 

 Their capture for any commercial reason is called "whaling," or "whale fishery," 



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