Whaling

Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Although it remains unclear where whaling was practiced as an organized industry for the first time, the earliest documentation demonstrating a well-established industry are from the year 1026 from the Basque coastal regions of Spain and France. From there, the whaling industry spread throughout the North Atlantic and later to the rest of the world and became very profitable in terms of trade and resources. Some regions of the world's oceans, along the animals' migration routes, had a particularly dense whale population and became targets for large concentrations of whaling ships, and the industry continued to grow well into the 20th century. The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led to the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969 and to an international cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s. Archaeological evidence suggests the earliest known forms of subsistence whaling on small cetaceans date to at least 3000 BC, practiced by the Inuit and other peoples in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. According to archaeological evidence from a 2026 study, the earliest form of whaling targeting baleen whales dates back at least 5,000 years ago (3,000 BC) and was estimated to have been practiced by indigenous peoples in southern Brazil. Coastal communities around the world have long histories of subsistence use of cetaceans, by dolphin drive hunting and by harvesting drift whales. Widespread commercial whaling emerged with organized fleets of whaling ships in the 17th century; competitive national whaling industries in the 18th and 19th centuries; and the introduction of factory ships and explosive harpoons along with the concept of whale harvesting in...