Can you hunt whales

Whaling - in depth. Whaling in Japan. Whaling in Iceland. Whaling in Norway. How many whales are killed each year? How are whales hunted? Why do people hunt whales? Why can some countries continue whaling? Why are dolphins hunted too? Find out more about dolphin hunts. How your support can help Expose the suffering — by supporting WDC, you can help expose and bring an end to the brutal dolphin hunts. Reduce demand for whale meat — you can help us inform tourists about the cruel slaughter they are supporting every time they order whale meat while on holiday in a whaling region.

Whale watching, not eating — help us work with local communities to encourage whale watching as a kinder and more sustainable way of earning income from the whales in their waters.

Support the fight to stop whaling Whales and dolphins continue to be slaughtered. Make a donation. Our campaigns Whaling is devastatingly cruel and completely unnecessary. Stop tourists eating whales In Iceland, Norway and Greenland, tourists eat much of the whale meat, believing they are experiencing local culture. Find out more. Campaigning on an international stage We work through the International Whaling Commission, the body that regulates whaling, to keep the ban and expose illegal hunts.

Hide Dive deeper. Dive deeper Find out more about the countries involved in whaling, how many whales are being killed and how whaling is regulated by the International Whaling Commission. Whaling in Iceland Iceland hunts endangered fin whales and minke whales. Whaling in Norway Norway allows hundreds of minke whales to be hunted.

Whaling in Greenland Find out how tourists unwittingly support whaling in Greenland. Whaling in Greenland. What is Aboriginal Subsistence whaling? Hide dive deeper.

Latest whaling news. The blunt end of the harpoon was attached to a long coil of line in a bucket. Although blacksmiths and harpooneers experimented with many different barbs, swivels, and toggles in designing harpoon heads, the standard, hand-darted harpoon in the second half of the nineteenth century was the toggle iron designed by an African-American in New Bedford, Lewis Temple.

The harpooneer stood at the bow front , bracing his leg against the thighboard, weapon in hand, poised for action. At this moment of danger, the crew backed the boat away, as the whale thrashed in pain.

The jaws or tail of a ton whale could smash a boat and send the crew tumbling into the water. In rough seas or fog, losing the whaleboat was a death sentence, if the ship could not find the scattered crew. The whale usually dove, taking down with it the embedded harpoon. The crew allowed the line to run out to prevent the boat from being dragged down with the whale.

The line was turned around a small post called a loggerhead, to slow it down as it ran out. As the whale pulled the boat, the line often played out so fast that it smoked from the friction. If the line became fouled, the boat could be dragged underwater.

A seaman caught in the rushing line could be pulled from the boat. When the whale came up to breathe, it often swam on the surface, at speeds of over twenty miles per hour for a sperm whale. The whaleboat, attached to the prey by harpoon and line, bounced along, showering the men with spray.

The danger was very real that the crew might be carried so far from the ship that it could not find them again. The kill: When the whale tired, the crew pulled on the line to draw the boat close to their prey, while boatheader and harpooneer changed places — a hazardous maneuver that led to more than one death.

The harpooneer went aft to the back to steer, while the boatheader carried a lance forward and plunged it into a vulnerable spot, such as the heart or lungs.

With each breath, the whale spouted blood. As the whaleboat backed off again, the crew observed the awesome spectacle of the death of the whale. After hours of tremendous exertion, the whaleboat crew still had work to do. The dead whale, often weighing more than 50 tons, had to be towed back to the ship by a handful of exhausted men, unless the ship could sail to it. Not all pursuits ended in the death of the whale. Crews sometimes chased for hours and never got close to their prey.

Occasionally, the harpooneer might not make a firm hit and the whale would escape, or the whaleboat would be overturned by a whale or a storm. Throughout the nineteenth century, whalemen sought to improve their methods of capturing whales by perfecting better weapons. The explosive weapons were intended to slow the whale down and weaken its ability to struggle against its captors.

Explosive devices were particularly popular in the Arctic fishery, where it was important to prevent the whale from diving under the ice. If the wind was favorable, the whaleship sailed to where the carcass floated in the sea. Cutting In It was important to process the whale quickly to prevent sharks from feasting on too much of the valuable carcass.

The crew, divided into two watches, worked six-hour shifts, day and night, until the job was done. The process could take from several hours to several days, depending on the size of the whale, the skill of the crew, and the weather.

The whale was made fast to the starboard right side of the ship with heavy chains. The crew erected the cutting stage plank platform above the carcass and:. The precious head The head of the sperm whale was very valuable. It was separated into three parts:. Baleen Unlike sperm whales, all baleen whales, such as bowhead and right whales, do not have teeth.

Instead, they use long vertical strips in their mouths, called baleen, to strain ocean water for krill, masses of shrimp-like organisms that float near the surface.

Baleen is made of keratin, a substance found in nails, horns, hoofs, and hair. It was used for:. Dangerous even in death Processing a whale was nearly as dangerous as hunting one.

The deck became so slick with blood and oil that a man could slip overboard to the sharks below. Others were crushed by the enormous weight of strips of blubber or wounded by cutting tools. As the blubber was being rendered in the tryworks, a wave sometimes rocked the ship and splashed scalding oil onto the crew.

On rare occasions, the fire in the tryworks spread and devastated the ship. And throughout the days and nights of work, an unforgettable stench clung to the men and their ship. The big cleanup After the last cask was stowed in the hold, the crew scrubbed and polished until the ship was once again as clean as it could be, considering that the inescapable odor of smoked blubber could never be eradicated.

It was said that a ship downwind could smell a whaleship coming. And begin again: As the cleanup ended, lookouts were sent up to the mastheads to watch for whales.

Beginning in the s, the Norwegian sealing captain-entrepreneur Svend Foyn pioneered revolutionary methods for hunting and processing whales. Instead of the rickety, old fashioned sail- and oar-powered whaleboats favored by traditional Yankee whalers, Foyn introduced mechanized, steam-powered catcher boats equipped with bow-chaser deck cannons and heavy-caliber harpoons that exploded on impact.

These increased efficiency and volume, enabling the harvest not only of all of the species that had been hunted for centuries notably, Northern and Southern right whales, sperm whales, Arctic bowheads, humpbacks, and gray whales , but also blue whales and finbacks—the largest species, which, by reason of their speed in the water, had eluded all previous hunting technologies.

The Norwegians first exploited their own coastal waters. Later, between and , they established shore-whaling stations on six continents including on the American Northwest Coast and pioneered pelagic factory-ship expeditions to the vast, hitherto unexploited grounds of Antarctica, employing entire fleets or a dozen or more vessels for months-long voyages to high South Latitudes.

Many technological innovations followed, including stern slipways on factory-ships for hauling entire carcasses aboard, integrated fleets of vessels with specialized tasks of catching, towing, processing, and bunkering, spotter aircraft and radio communications to track migrating whales, and remarkable advances in ordnance, food chemistry, and processing machinery. Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, China, Korea, Argentina, and Japan followed Norway into pelagic factory-ship whaling; two factory-ships partly owned in the United States and technically registered at Wilmington, Delaware which had also briefly been a conventional whaling port in the s , were also sent whaling in Antarctica in the s.

It was this relentlessly efficient technology, and the failure of the whaling nations to adhere to protective quotas regulating the catch, that in the decades following World War II devastated several species to the point of extinction. International treaties were negotiated in the s to regulate the hunt, and the International Whaling Commission was established in , with an expert Scientific Committee to monitor population and abundance.

However, lack of enforcement authority, inherent administrative flaws, and persistent international disputes, combined with clandestine over-fishing and under-reporting of the catch notably by the Soviet Union , fatally weakened IWC effectiveness. Nevertheless, some nations have resumed limited whaling outside the jurisdiction of the IWC taking species that are not generally considered to be critically endangered.

The condition of several species — the North Atlantic right whale, the Arctic bowhead, and the Pacific blue whale — remains critical. Ash, Christopher. Modern whaling narrative of the British floating-factory whaleship Balaena. Elliott, Sir Gerald. Kendall Monograph Sharon, Massachusetts, The History of Modern Whaling. Translated by R. As sperm whales became scarcer, whaleships sailed further north in the Pacific. When Thomas Welcome Roys, master of the Sag Harbor, New York, ship Superior sailed into the Bering Sea in , he discovered a large population of bowhead whales and launched the era of Arctic whaling.

Hungry for baleen Baleen strips made of keratin that are found in the mouths of baleen whales instead of teeth was used for:. A new enemy Although the Arctic bowhead did not fight as fiercely as the sperm whale, whalemen had to cope with a savage environment. Good timing was critical. Whaleships reached the Arctic in mid-summer when the ice had melted enough to permit passage and had to sail out in late summer to avoid getting trapped in the ice.

By , as whales were becoming harder to find, the Arctic fleet had only twenty vessels. Twelve ships were lost that year, and there were other, smaller losses to ice in later years.

The names of the vessels lost in were:. As the price of baleen rose during the s, an increasing number of auxiliary steam-powered whaleships joined the traditional fleet in hunting for bowheads. These new whalers could enter dangerous waters and get out again, unlike their sail-powered cousins.

More information Over 30, whales killed since IWC moratorium. Click here to enlarge. Scientific whaling - politics, not science Under another provision of the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, some nations have continued to hunt whales using the "scientific permit" exception. This system allows nations to grant their whalers permits to conduct scientific studies, with the express understanding that the whales taken should be "processed" "so far as practicable".

In this way, whales may be taken and their meat and products commercially sold. Accusations have been made that Japan is using scientific permits as a way around the moratorium. Japan and Iceland are the only two countries that currently use this provision. Japan has been engaged in scientific whaling since , a year after the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling began.

Iceland recently began "scientific whaling" in before resuming their commerical hunt in These countries claim that the catches are essential to obtain necessary information for research and future cetacean management. More detailed information on the number of whales killed since the IWC moratorium began in