Whaling stretches far back in human history, with evidence dating back to the Middle Ages, to Indigenous and cultural uses over the last several thousand years, to the emergence of a global commercial whaling industry over the last two centuries. Commercial whaling in American waters came to an end on Dec. 31, 1971, and the last whale to be taken for commercial harvest was a sperm whale taken near San Francisco Bay, in what is today Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and other legislation, many of the waters that were once killing grounds for whales are now a haven for wildlife of all kinds.
The basic rules for entry to the book giveaway contest are:
1. Contest began on May 30 and runs until the end of the day on June 13, 2015, EST.
2. Entry limited to residents of U.S. and Canada w/a mailing address therein. (Sorry everyone else! Int'l shipping is just more than I can currently afford)
3. Method of Entry - Either leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or your pod catcher of choice, or tell a friend about the podcast.
4. Notification - Message me on Facebook or Twitter, or email me at [email protected] with the username you used to leave a review or how you told a friend about the podcast.
5. Drawing - I will verify review entries and enter all participants in a random drawing that will be conducted during the week of June 13.
6. Winner - I will notify the winner via the method they entered within a day of drawing. The winner has one week to accept the prize. If it is not accepted by initial winner, I’ll conduct a second drawing with the remaining entrants.
7. Prize - The prize is one (1) copy of the ‘Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex: The Complete Illustrated Edition: The Extraordinary and Distressing Memoir That Inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.’ More info about the book can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Wreck-Whale-Ship-Essex-Extraordinary/dp/076034812X. The Maritime History Podcast will pay for shipping costs involved in getting the prize to the mailing address provided by the contest winner.
From a project on the Azores and their historical whaling trade (two things that I’ve sort of accidentally become very well-informed about), a spread and a spot illustration. This was my first attempt at painting the ocean on any sort of large scale with watercolors, and I think it turned out not half-bad.
Historical chart showing the number of Orca hunted off the coasts of Hokkaido 1948-1972.
A majority of the hunt was done by Honshu (mainland Japan) whalers and was done primarily for the purpose of oil. Hunts took place in waters surrounding Hokkaido including the Sea of Okhotsk near the coast of Abashiri and in the Nemuro Straight.
1964-1967 the hunt numbers spiked, but since have plummeted. 1973 and on, the Orca hunts have been nearly non existent.
My fav whaling logbook phenomenon is when their keeper opts NOT to use whale stamps and instead hand-draws very ornate whales to indicate when he sees them, but then as time goes on the whales get progressively shittier looking because that’s too much work. I know how it feels to get locked into an artistic bit later regretted, man.
E.g.
[ID: Detailed drawing of a sperm whale with shading, eyes, and a spout]
[ID: Wobblier drawing of a whale with no shading and no detailed features]
Bowhead Whale survives harpoon attack 130 years ago to become ‘world’s oldest mammal’
Bowhead whales are known to be the longest-living mammals, living for over 200 years. In May 2007, a 15 m (49 ft) specimen caught off the Alaskan coast was discovered with the head of an explosive harpoon embedded deep under its neck blubber. The 3.5-inch (89 mm) arrow-shaped projectile was manufactured in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a major whaling center, around 1890, suggesting the animal may have survived a similar hunt more than a century ago.
Model of the “San Juan” whaler built in 1563, it hit the rocks and soon sank in 1565. Underwater archaeologists have found its remains in the Red Bay in Canada. Also a replica is present at the Albaola Maritime Museum, Pasaia San Pedro, Basque Coast, Spain.
A remarkable new study on how whales behaved when attacked by humans in the 19th century has implications for the way they react to changes wreaked by humans in the 21st century. The paper, published by the Royal Society on Wednesday [17 March 2021], is authored by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, pre-eminent scientists working with cetaceans, and Tim D Smith, a data scientist, and their research addresses an age-old question: if whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn’t. Using newly digitised logbooks detailing the hunting of sperm whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons fell by 58%. […] Before humans, orca were their only predators […]. It was a frighteningly rapid killing, and it accompanied other threats to the ironically named Pacific. From whaling and sealing stations to missionary bases, western culture was imported to an ocean that had remained largely untouched […].
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Headline and text published by: Philip Hoare. “Sperm whales in the 19th century shared ship attack information.” The Guardian. 17 March 2021.
Catching a sperm whale during the 19th century was much harder than even Moby Dick showed it to be. That’s because sperm whales weren’t just capable of learning the best ways to evade the whalers’ ships, they could quickly share this information with other whales, too, according to a study of whale-hunting records. […]
“At first, the whales reacted to the new threat of human hunters in exactly the same way as they would to the killer whale, which was their only predator at this time,” study lead author Hal Whitehead, a professor of biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, told Live Science. “[The sperm whales] all gathered together on the surface, put the baby in the middle, and tried to defend by biting or slapping their tails down. But when it comes to fending off Captain Ahab that’s the very worst thing they could do, they made themselves a very large target.”
The whales seem to have learned from their mistakes, and the ones that survived quickly adapted — instead of resorting to old tactics, the whalers wrote in their logbooks, the sperm whales instead chose new ones, swimming fast upwind away from the whalers’ wind-powered vessels.[…]
The whales communicated with and learned from each other rapidly, and the lessons were soon integrated into their wider culture across the region, according to the researchers’ interpretation of the data.
“Each whale group that you meet at sea typically comprises two or three family units, and the units quite often split off and form other groups,” Whitehead said. “So, what we think happened is that one or two of the units that make up the group could have had encounters with humans before, and the ones who didn’t copied closely from their pals who had.“
Sperm whales are excellent intel sharers: Their highly observant, communicative nature, and the fact that each family unit only stays in larger groups for a few days at a time, means they can transmit information fast.
As studies show, that information could be news on new threats, new ways to hunt or new songs to sing.
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One example of whales’ extraordinary information sharing abilities involves lobtail feeding, in which a humpback whale slaps its tail hard against the water’s surface, submerges to blow disorienting bubbles around its prey, and then scoops the prey up in its mouth. Researchers first observed this tactic being used by a single whale in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1980, before it spread throughout the regional population in just 10 years.
Whale culture also extends far deeper than innovative ways to feed. “Sperm whales are divided into acoustic cultural climates,” Whitehead said. “They split themselves into large clans, each with distinctive patterns of sonar clicks, like a dialect, and they only form groups with members of the same clan.”
Different whale clans each have different ways of singing, moving, hunting and looking after their calves. These differences are profound enough to even give some clans a survival advantage during El Nino events, according to Whitehead. […]
In the 20th century, whales, especially the 13 species belonging to the category of ‘great whales’ — such as blue whales, sperm whales and humpback whales — found themselves pursued by steamships and grenade harpoons that they could not escape. These whales’ numbers plummeted and they soon faced extinction. […] [T]hey still face the growing destabilization of their habitats brought about by industrial fishing, noise pollution and climate change.
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Headline, image, caption, and text published by: Ben Turner. “Sperm whales outwitted 19th-century whalers by sharing evasive tactics.” Live Science. 19 March 2021.
Scenes from a pilot whale hunt in Torshavn, Faroe Islands, Denmark, 1961. Pilot whales were traditionally killed when hunters drove a pod of whales into a harbor and slaughtered them en masse. The practice lasted into the 1980s.
