Commercial whaling

Commercial whaling is the industrial hunting and processing of whales for saleable products such as oil, meat, and baleen. It expanded with specialized ships and processing technology, and drove severe declines in many whale populations.

Whaling ship: A vessel designed or adapted to locate, kill, and process whales. Steam-powered whaling ships extended voyages and enabled fleets to pursue faster whales.
Basque whaling: A medieval and early modern whaling industry developed by Basque communities in the Bay of Biscay and beyond. Basque voyages established a durable commercial model before the rise of global industrial fleets.
Whaling and conservation: The development of efforts to limit whale hunting and protect whale populations. Population declines caused by commercial hunting prompted organized conservation measures.
Aboriginal subsistence whaling: Whale hunting by Indigenous communities for subsistence and cultural purposes under specific management regimes. It is distinguished from commercial whaling by its purpose, governance, and treatment under international rules.
Harpoon: A barbed spear, often fired from a gun, used to attach a line to a large animal. Explosive harpoons made it possible to kill large, fast-swimming whales at range.
Dutch whaling: The large-scale Arctic whale hunt conducted by Dutch merchants and crews, especially from the seventeenth century. Dutch fleets made Arctic whaling a major international trade in whale oil.
International Whaling Commission: An intergovernmental organization established to regulate whaling and conserve whale stocks. The commission became the main forum for setting international rules on commercial whaling.
Scientific whaling: Whaling conducted under claims of scientific research, a practice permitted under an earlier treaty provision. Its disputed relationship to commercial activity became a major point of conflict after the moratorium.
Factory ship: A vessel that processes catches at sea rather than delivering them to shore-based plants. Factory ships let whalers exploit remote waters without returning to coastal stations after each catch.
Yankee whaling: The American ocean-going whaling industry centered on New England ports during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yankee voyages developed the global reach and commercial scale associated with nineteenth-century whaling.

Linked from 7 pages