From the earliest days of exploration, Antarctica was plundered for it's natural
resources.
Along with seals, the chief resource was whales.
Many different whale species migrate south
during the austral summer to take advantage of the food resources of vast swarms
of krill that feed on the huge phytoplankton blooms. These blooms result
from upwellings of nutrients around Antarctica along with up to 24hours of daylight
for much of the region in midsummer.
Ships would be sent south to harvest the whales
with no regard to the long term protection of the fishery, the plunder of Antarctic
whales was more akin to mining than to a sustainable fishery. Take what is there,
and when it is gone there will be no more.
The result was the decimation of virtually
all of the world's whale species to the extent that today, decades after large
scale commercial whaling stopped, most whale stocks are still a small fraction
of their pre-whaling levels.
Today around 300
whales are still taken from the Antarctic waters by the Japanese for 'research'
they also sell the flesh from these "scientifically gathered" whales to fund
their marine research programmes (whale meat is highly prized in Japanese eateries).
More recently some whaling nations have been pressing for a lifting of the ban
on commercial whaling.
News about whales
Antarctic
whaling began on a large scale in 1904 with the building of a whale processing
station at Grytviken, South Georgia. A number
of shore-based stations were in operation under some kind of regulation on the
catches very shortly after this. Processing of carcasses was very inefficient
in the early days as a whale was stripped of its blubber alongside the factory
ship and the remains were left to float away. There are places around Antarctica
and sub-Antarctic islands such as South Georgia where there are beaches that
are covered with whale bones. In some places the beaches are made of almost
nothing else but whale bones.
In 1925, the
first "factory ships" were built so that whaling could take place entirely at
sea. This meant that the whalers were not operating within the territory of
any one country and so consequently there were no regulations on catch size
or species taken nor on the age or sex (nursing mothers with calves for example)
of the catch.
The best catch for
whalers were initially Humpback whales as they swam slowly and often close to
the land so were easy to reach. As whalers became able to operate away
from port with faster whaling boats, their attentions turned to the Blue Whale.
Blues were always the preferred species even when numbers were declining, but
as they became scarcer attention was turned to firstly Fin and then Sei whales,
each progressively less profitable than the predecessor.
The taking of Fin
and Sei whales was banned by international agreement in the late 1970's when
those nations still involved in whaling turned to the much smaller Minkes.

A plaque from outside Tonsberg House (now dismantled
and removed) on Signy Island in the South Orkneys group. This British
Antarctic Survey base was built on the site of a Norwegian whaling station
founded in 1921. The plaque is a whale vertebra (backbone) found on
a beach near the base, from a whale killed by the whalers, painted by
one of the base personnel. It hangs on a stave from a wooden barrel
that would have been used to hold melted down whale blubber.
It details the whaling catches by the whaling fleet
in the period 1911-1930 in the South Orkney and South Shetland islands.
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Antarctic Whale Catches (close
- up of above)
South Orkneys
and South Shetlands 1911 - 1930
Right 78 Blue 61336 Fin
48023 Sei 1796 Humpback 6742 Sperm 184
Total whale catch in 19 years
118 159 whales
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Whale graveyard
About half a mile from the site of the
whaling station on Signy is a shallow beach that is sea covered at high
tide and exposed at low tide.
The carcasses once "flensed" stripped
of all useful material would be pushed into the sea. Many would wash
up onto this beach where they remain many decades later. There are skeletal
parts of many different whales here.
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The International Whaling Commission (IWC)
was set up in 1946 to "regulate the orderly development of the whaling industry".
Unfortunately it was widely perceived as failing in this task. From the 1970's
onwards conservation groups began an intense international struggle aimed at
saving whaling stocks from further depletion.
"Scientific whaling" for research purposes
is a loophole to internationally agreed moratoria on whaling and remains a controversial
issue.
Proposals put forward by Japan to take Sperm
and Minke whales were criticized by the IWC because of the infeasibility of
the proposed research methods. Many people consider that "scientific whaling"
is simply a continuation of commercial whaling under a different name.
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Cool Antarctica emailed
the Japanese Whaling Association (JWA)
to invite them to submit scientific data or a link to scientific
data to this web site. At present no reply has been received.
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Transcript of email sent to
webmaster@whaling.jp
on Sun 27/01/02 19:38 GMT re-sent on Sat 16/02/02 00:06 GMT. If
a reply is received, it will be published here.
| Hi there,
I have a web site www.coolantarctica.com that is a general
Antarctica site. I am in the process of adding a "whales
and whaling" section. I have no particular axe to grind
or alternative agenda, I wish to present information to
an audience that consists of many schools and teachers.
The section will contain basic facts and pictures about
whales, historical information and present day information.
Would it be possible to present some of the scientific
information on my site that has been found by the Japanese
whaling programme? The whaling pages are not yet in place,
perhaps you would want to see them first, but they will
be presented in the same manner as the pages on travel in
Antarctica where I have contributions and links about pro
and anti-tourism.
My own position is as a concerned naturalist eager to
promote Antarctica, I do not suffer from the mawkish anthropomorphism
of some campaigners. If you were able to contribute anything,
I would happy to submit the page that I use it in for your
approval or otherwise before publishing it on my site.
Best regards
Paul Ward
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addendum 2007
Oh dear - silly me!
Having been a research scientist in the past, I had this idea
that "scientific whaling" was about learning about whales for the purpose of
advancing research and knowledge.
How wrong could I be!
It turns out that "scientific whaling" has really always been
about monitoring the whale population to gain information about when the whaling
nations can begin commercial whaling again.
So the information that "scientific whaling" was looking for
was when could they recommence commercial whaling - according to their own
decisions of course - and look what a disaster that was first time around!
It has also had the side-effect of keeping alive whaling
skills amongst the fishermen and keeping the idea of whaling alive amongst the
Japanese public - so it could begin again one day.
This cynical use of the concept of "scientific whaling" simply
reinforces the view of whalers as unfeelingly exploiting the world's whale
population that should be protected forever and not "fished"
Despite this however, it seems that the whalers may be up
against the strongest of all oppositions - market forces. Young Japanese in
particular simply don't like the idea of eating whale meat and blubber however
the whales have been killed or "culled" according to the spin of the whalers.

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