Their flukes are triangular.ĭiet: These toothed whales hunt for food during deep dives that can last for 45 minutes.
#White sperm whale skin#
Their heads account for about one-third of total body length, and the skin just behind the head is often wrinkled. Illustration courtesy: Whaleopedia Sperm WhalesĬharacteristics: Sperm whales have a single blowhole asymmetrically situated on the left side of the crown of the head. The native people of Alaska, who had hunted bowhead whales for generations before New Englanders arrived, were granted an exception to the law, and continue to hunt whales under quotas established to protect the current population. In 1972, the United States Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which banned the hunting of marine mammals and the trade in products made from them. By 1982, humpback whales in the southern hemisphere were reduced to two percent of their original population blue whales to five percent, and finbacks to 21 percent. The new technology wreaked havoc on species that New Bedforders had never successfully hunted commercially. By 1930 right whales were facing extinction, and their hunt was banned worldwide. These “catcher boats” worked in company with factory ships large enough to drag a blue whale up onto the deck for processing. New Bedford whaling crews faced competition from steam-powered vessels with harpoon cannons at the bow. New Bedforders were still involved in the hunt then, but used old technology. The Norwegians pioneered such a hunt, and new-age whaling became popular in Antarctic waters around 1920. To make a profit in the 20 th century, new technologies were required to chase the faster, more sinkable species. By 1900 bowhead whales were almost extinct in the Arctic. The discovery of the breeding and calving grounds of grey whales in the shallow bays of Baja California in 1846 led to a hunt that very nearly decimated the species in just a few decades.
By that time, the North Atlantic Ocean was already stripped of sperm and right whales. In 1851, hydrographer Matthew Fontaine Maury published a chart of whale population derived from voyage logbooks. The large number of whaling vessels active in the mid-1800s and the routine attack on well-identified whaling grounds led to dramatically decreased populations. A four-year voyage was considered successful if it had taken and processed fifty whales. However, Yankee whalemen killed every whale they could, even if it meant killing a calf to take its mother. Little was known about the size of whale stocks or the migratory patterns of different whale species that was not learned directly through the process of hunting them.Įarly whaling methods included handheld tools, sail and oar power, and the small-boat approach, so many whales got away. Photo courtesy: Wiki CommonsĪt the height of New Bedford’s participation in the whaling industry, Yankee whalemen hunted four primary species: right whales and sperm whales in all the oceans, gray whales on the west coast of America, and bowheads in the Arctic.
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