What is whaling ? This is a hunt for whales in order to obtain economic benefits, and not at all food. It was only in the second half of the 20th century that they began to commercialize and use whale meat as food.
Whaling Products
Today, any schoolchild knows that the whaling industry began with the extraction of blubber - whale oil, which was originally used for lighting, in the manufacture of jute and as lubricants. In Japan, blubber was used as an insecticide against locusts in rice fields.
Over time, the technology of fat accumulation has changed, new materials have come. Blubber is no longer used for lighting since kerosene appeared, but the substance necessary for the production of soap is obtained from it. It is also used as an additive to vegetable fat in the preparation of margarine. Glycerin, oddly enough, is a byproduct of removing fatty acids from blubbering.
Whale oil is used in the manufacture of candles, cosmetic and therapeutic preparations and products, colored pencils, printing ink, linoleum, varnishes.
Whale meat is used to prepare meat extract or, like bone powder, animal feed. The main consumers of whale meat are Japanese.
Bone powder is also used as a fertilizer in agriculture.
The so-called solution, the broth after processing meat in autoclaves, rich in protein products, also goes to food for pets.
Whale leather in Japan during the Second World War was used in the footwear industry for manufacturing soles, although it is not as durable as ordinary leather.
Blood powder used to be used because of its high nitrogen content as a fertilizer, and due to its binding properties - as an adhesive in the woodworking industry.
Gelatin is obtained from body tissues of the whale, vitamin A is obtained from the liver, adrenocorticotropic hormone from the pituitary gland, and ambergris from the intestines. For a long time, insulin was extracted from the pancreas in Japan.
Now almost no whalebone is used, which at one time was necessary for the manufacture of corsets, high wigs, crinolines, umbrellas, kitchen utensils, furniture and many other useful things. Until now, there are crafts from sperm whale, grind and killer whale teeth.
In a word, today whales are completely utilized.
Whaling history
Norway can be considered the birthplace of whale hunting. Already in the rock paintings of the settlements, whose age is four thousand years old, there are scenes of whale hunting. And from there the first evidence of the regular fishing of whales in Europe in the period 800-1000 years BC comes. e.
In the 12th century, Basque whaling was conducted in the Bay of Biscay. From there, whaling moved north to Greenland. The Danes, and the British after them, hunted whales in the waters of the Arctic. Whalers came to the east coast of North America in the 17th century. At the beginning of the same century, similar fishing originated in Japan.
In those days, the fleet was sailing. Whaling sailboats were small, light-weight and not very maneuverable. Therefore, they hunted Greenland and Biscay whales from rowing boats with hand harpoons and butchered them directly into the sea, taking only a blubber and a whalebone. Besides the fact that these animals are small, they still do not sink, being killed, they can be tied to a boat and towed to the shore or ship. Only the Japanese brought flotillas of small boats with nets into the sea.
In the XVIII and XIX centuries, the geography of whaling expanded, captured the southern Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, South Africa and the Seychelles.
In the north, whalers began to prey on Greenland and smooth whales, and later humpbacks in Greenland, in the Davis Strait and near Svalbard, in the Beaufort, Bering and Chukchi Seas .
The time came when a harpoon of a new design was invented, which still exists with minor changes, and a harpoon gun. Around the same time, sailing vessels were replaced by steam, with greater speed and maneuverability and much larger sizes. At the same time, whaling could not but change. The 19th century with the development of technology led to the almost complete extermination of populations of smooth and bowhead whales, so much so that at the beginning of the next century the British fishing of whales in the Arctic ceased to exist. The center of hunting for marine mammals has moved to the Pacific Ocean, to Newfoundland and the west coast of Africa.
In the twentieth century, whaling reached the islands of Western Antarctica. Large floating factories in sheltered bays, later uterine vessels, with the advent of which whalers ceased to depend on the coast, led to the creation of fleets operating on the high seas. New methods for processing whale fat, which has become the raw material in the production of dynamite nitroglycerin, have made whales become, among other things, a strategic target for fishing.
In 1946, the International Whaling Commission was established, which later became the working body of the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, which was joined by almost all whaling countries.
From the beginning of the era of commercial whaling to the Second World War, the leaders in this area were Norway, the UK, Holland, and the USA. After the war, Japan replaced them, followed by the Soviet Union.
Harpoons and harpoon guns
From the middle of the 19th century to the present day, whaling is not complete without a harpoon gun.
Norwegian whaler Sven Foyn invented a harpoon of a new design and a gun for him. It was a heavy weapon weighing 50 kg and a length of two meters, such a spear grenade, at the end of which paws were mounted, already opening in the body of the whale and holding it like an anchor, preventing it from drowning. There was attached a metal box with gunpowder and a glass vessel with sulfuric acid, which served as a fuse when it was broken by the base of the opened paws inside the shot animal. Later, this vessel replaced the remote fuse.
As before, and now harpoons are made of exceptionally elastic Swedish steel, they do not break even with the most powerful jerking whales. A strong tench several hundred meters long is connected to the harpoon.
The firing range of a gun with a barrel about one meter long and a channel diameter of 75-90 mm reached 25 meters. This distance was quite enough, because usually the ship approached the whale almost close to it. At first, the gun was loaded from the barrel, but with the invention of smokeless powder, the design changed, and they began to charge it from the breech. By design, the harpoon gun does not differ from the usual artillery gun with a simple sighting and trigger mechanism, the quality and effectiveness of firing both earlier and now depend on the skill of the harpooner.
Whaler
From the time the first steam engines were built to the present, both steam and diesel whalers, despite the development of technology, the basic principles have not changed. An ordinary whaler has a blunt bow and stern, widely decayed cheekbones, a balancer-type rudder that provide increased maneuverability of the vessel, very low sides and a high forecastle, develops a speed of up to 20 knots (land 37 km / h). The capacity of a steam or diesel installation is about 5 thousand liters. from. The vessel is equipped with navigation and search devices.
The armament consists of a harpoon gun, a winch for pulling the whale to the side, a compressor for pumping air into the carcass and ensuring its buoyancy, invented by Foin of the shock-absorbing system with spiral springs and pulleys to prevent the line from breaking during jerking of the harpooned animal.
Whalers
The conditions for hunting marine mammals have changed, and it would seem that whaling safety is not needed. But this is not so.
Whale hunting takes place in the northern seas hundreds of miles from the coast or a floating base, often during a storm.
Large powerful high-speed vessels prey on minke whales. Just bringing a modern whaling ship to a blue whale is already a considerable art. And now, despite the search devices, the guard is sitting on the mast in the crow's nest, and the harpooner has to guess the direction of movement of the huge animal and adjust to its speed, standing at the helm. An experienced hunter can control the vessel so that the head of a whale that emerges from swallowing air is so close to the bow of the ship that you can look into the animal’s huge breathing apparatus. At this moment, the harpooner passes the helm to the helmsman and runs from the captain’s bridge to the cannon. Further, he not only monitors the movements of the animal, but also leads the helm.
When a whale, having swallowed air, lowers its head under water, its back is shown above the surface, at this moment the harpooner and shoots, carefully aiming. Usually one hit is not enough, the whales are fished like fish, the ship comes closer to it, and a new shot follows.
The carcass with a winch is pulled to the surface, inflated with air through a tube and a pole with a pennant or a buoy is inserted into which a radio transmitter is mounted, the ends of the tail fins are chopped off, the serial number is cut out on the skin and left to drift.
At the end of the hunt, all drifting carcasses are picked up and towed to the mother ship or coast station.
Coast stations
The coast station is formed around a large slipway with powerful winches, on which whale carcasses are raised for cutting, and chopping knives. Boilers are located on both sides: on the one hand, for heating the blubber, and on the other, for processing meat and bones under pressure. In the drying ovens, the bones and meat, after melting the fat, are dried and crushed by loops of heavy chains, which are suspended inside cylindrical furnaces, and then ground into powder in special mills and packed in bags. Finished products are stored in warehouses and in tanks. Modern coastal stations have vertical autoclave and rotary kilns.
Process control and analysis of blubbering is carried out in a chemical laboratory.
Floating factories
In the heyday of the floating factories that are now dying, the converted large merchant or passenger ships were first used for them.
Carcasses were cut in water, only the fat layer lifted on board, which was reheated directly on board, and carcasses were thrown into the sea for fish to eat. Coal reserves were limited, there was not enough space, so the equipment for the production of fertilizers was not installed on ships. The carcasses were used irrationally, but the floating factories had several advantages. Firstly, there was no need to rent land for a coast station. Secondly, the mobility of the factory made it possible to deliver the blubber to its destination on the same vessel without pumping from coastal tanks.
Already in the 20th century, ocean whalers began to be built, which were equipped with the latest technology, they could store large reserves of fuel and drinking water. These were uterine vessels, to which whole fleets of small whalers were attributed.
The technological process of cutting and processing fat on such vessels, despite the difference in equipment, was about the same as on coast stations.
In many factories, equipment appeared for freezing whale sirloin meat, which is used as food.
Modern whaling expeditions
Modern whaling is limited to international agreements on the catch and duration of the hunting season, which, however, are not performed by all countries.
The whaling expedition includes a queen ship and other modern whaling vessels, as well as veterans who are towing carcasses to floating factories and delivering food, water and fuel from bases to vessels engaged in the search and shooting of whales.
Attempts were made to find whales from the air. A successful solution was the use of helicopters that land on the deck of a large ship, as was done in Japan.
In recent decades, whales have been in the center of public sympathy and close attention, and the majority of species due to over-fishing continues to decline. And this despite the fact that almost any kind of whaling products already have artificial substitutes.
Norway continues to whale in small quantities, as part of the indigenous catch - Greenland, Iceland, Canada, USA, Grenada, Dominica and Saint Lucia, Indonesia.
Whaling in Japan
In Japan, unlike other countries that have ever been involved in whaling, whale meat is primarily valued, and only then blubber.
The structure of modern Japanese whaling expeditions necessarily includes a separate refrigerated vessel, in which meat mined or bought from whalers from European countries is frozen.
The Japanese began to use harpoons in the hunt for whales by the end of the 19th century, having increased their catches by several times and extended the fishing not only to the Sea of Japan, but also to the north-eastern coast of the Pacific Ocean.
Modern whaling in Japan until recently has been concentrated mainly in the Antarctic.
The whaling fleets of the country are distinguished by the largest number of scientific equipment. Sonars show the distance to the whale and the direction of its movement. Electric thermometers automatically record temperature changes in the surface layers of water. Using bathythermographs, the characteristics of the water masses and the vertical distribution of the water temperature are determined.
Such a quantity of modern equipment makes it possible for the Japanese to justify the fishing of whales with the value of scientific data and to mask the hunt for species prohibited by the International Whale Commission for commercial fishing.
Many public organizations around the world, especially the United States and Australia, oppose Japan in defense of endangered rare species of whales.
Australia has managed to secure a ruling by the International Court of Justice prohibiting Japan from whaling in the Antarctic.
Japan also hunts whales off its coast, explaining this by the traditions of the population of coastal villages. But indigenous fishing is allowed only to peoples for whom whale meat is one of the main types of food.
Whaling in Russia
Pre-revolutionary Russia was not among the leaders of the whale industry. Pomors, inhabitants of the Kola Peninsula and the indigenous population of Chukotka were engaged in the extraction of whales.
Whaling in the USSR for a long time, starting in 1932, was concentrated in the Far East. The first Aleut flotilla consisted of a whaling depot and three whaling vessels. After the war, 22 whaling vessels and five cutting coastal bases operated in the Pacific Ocean, and in the 1960s, the Far East and Vladivostok whalers.
In 1947, the Slava whaling fleet, which was received from Germany by indemnity, went to the shores of the Antarctic. It included a processing base ship and 8 whalers.
In the middle of the 20th century, flotilla whales “Soviet Ukraine” and “Soviet Russia” began to be caught in that region, and a little later, “Yuri Dolgoruky” with the largest floating bases in the world, designed to process up to 75 whales a day.
The Soviet Union stopped long-range whaling in 1987. Already after the collapse of the Union, data were published on violations by the Soviet flotillas of IWC quotas.
Today, in the framework of indigenous fishing in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, coastal gray whale mining is carried out according to quotas of the MKK and beluga whales under permits issued by the Federal Fisheries Agency.
Conclusion
When the ban on commercial fishing was introduced, the numbers of humpback and blue whales began to recover in certain areas of the oceans.
But smooth whale populations in the northern hemisphere are still at risk of complete extinction. Greenland whales of the Sea of Okhotsk and gray whales in the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean cause similar concerns. Too late it was possible to stop the barbaric extermination of these marine mammals.