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How Whaling Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to you? Stuff you should
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Speaker 1: know from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I can't believe we're
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Speaker 1: doing this again. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant doing one again? Yes,
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Speaker 1: the show? Yeah? What did you think we were done?
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Speaker 1: I'm so tired, are you? I'm so tired. I'm discouraged
0:32
Speaker 1: to know that you hate Tom Petty. I hate them,
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Speaker 1: Mr Petty. I'm sure you're a genuinely nice guy, but
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Speaker 1: I can't stand your music. Oh I love Tom Petty.
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Speaker 1: That's great. I hope you love them enough for both
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Speaker 1: of us. That's fine. I just I'm not surprised because
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Speaker 1: you don't dig a lot of that sort of classic
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Speaker 1: rock stuff. That's not true. Born and raised thirty special
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Speaker 1: fan buddy, Are you really okay? I like plenty of
1:00
Speaker 1: classic rock except led Zeppelin. Uh Um. I don't hate
1:08
Speaker 1: a C. D C. I just don't really whatever you know?
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Speaker 1: Uh what else don't I like? Wait, let's do this
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Speaker 1: the other way. Here's the classic rock. I do like
1:18
Speaker 1: the doors your I just twitched did it. Jim Morrison
1:23
Speaker 1: does that to me? Um, let's see. Uh, I guess
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Speaker 1: that's about it. The doors. Yeah, I used to like
1:31
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead, as you know, sure, but I don't anymore. Well,
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Speaker 1: this has been a scintillating start. Do you want to
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Speaker 1: record over this? No? No, I think it's good. So
1:42
Speaker 1: um ahoy chuck. Um, we're gonna be talking like that
1:46
Speaker 1: a lot like Scarby Sea dogs. Um, not pirates, it's
1:52
Speaker 1: Scarby Sea dogs, big difference. Um, that was a Scotsman
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Speaker 1: they sailed. They definitely did. Um. I have an intro.
2:03
Speaker 1: Let's hear it. And it was a gift from you.
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Speaker 1: So thank you for this? Oh the news recently? Yeah good,
2:08
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. So the Japanese, Um, we're very
2:12
Speaker 1: sad when they came back to Japan from Antarctica and said,
2:16
Speaker 1: we only caught two hundred and sixties seven whales, which
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Speaker 1: is way less than the nine we planned to catch
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Speaker 1: this season. Yeah. Um, they left. They left Japan in
2:31
Speaker 1: December and came back very recently, um at the beginning
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Speaker 1: of March, because whales season was virtually over in Antarctica.
2:40
Speaker 1: Even though there's a couple of weird things here. Uh,
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Speaker 1: Antarctica is one of the places in the world where
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Speaker 1: whales are protected internationally supposedly, and number two, whale hunting's outlaw.
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Speaker 1: This isn't like gb year zero where you can just
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Speaker 1: go and whale commercially. Um. Instead, it's two thousand twelve
3:05
Speaker 1: and Japan still managed to kill two d and sixty
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Speaker 1: seven whales. Now, um, for people who are fans of whales,
3:13
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of whales. Isn't everyone who's like stupid whales?
3:18
Speaker 1: They deserve it. I'm sure whalers no. I think they
3:21
Speaker 1: just have a you know, an industry that they're trying
3:23
Speaker 1: to keep going. Um. And I want to clarify, uh.
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Speaker 1: When we say whaling, we're talking about whale killing expeditions,
3:32
Speaker 1: not whale watching expeditions. Just to clarify to people like
3:35
Speaker 1: my wife. Um so Uh. The the Japanese whaling season
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Speaker 1: ended prematurely, right, It packed up their harpoons and went home,
3:46
Speaker 1: thanks to the efforts of a group known as Sea Shepherds.
3:51
Speaker 1: Then the sea Shepherds. Sea shepherds sell sea shells by
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Speaker 1: the sea shore. They're militant. Uh. They're described as a
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Speaker 1: militant environmental group. Have you seen their boats? Are they
4:02
Speaker 1: the ones that are painted like death from Above style?
4:05
Speaker 1: They have They have the logo Jolly Rogers skilling cross boats,
4:09
Speaker 1: but one of the bones is a triadent and the
4:12
Speaker 1: others like a shepherd's hook. That's pretty cool. But even
4:16
Speaker 1: cooler it's painted on the side of boats that look
4:18
Speaker 1: like batmobiles. Yeah, that's the ones. I yeah, pretty cool.
4:22
Speaker 1: I believe they have a show on our our parent
4:25
Speaker 1: mother company, Discovery, who keeps us warm in her embrace
4:29
Speaker 1: and suckles us from her teeth. Whale Wars. Yeah, that's
4:34
Speaker 1: gotta be it, right. Yeah, that's time I've never seen that.
4:36
Speaker 1: I don't say that. I love that show every night.
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Speaker 1: I love that show too, and all of its commercial sponsors.
4:44
Speaker 1: So they show up, they say, we're gonna throw our
4:48
Speaker 1: ropes in your propellers, and we're gonna launch stink bombs
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Speaker 1: at your boat and to to to thwart your whole
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Speaker 1: operation in the Japanese retaliated using water cannons, throwing harpoons,
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Speaker 1: grappling hooks, bamboo spears. Yeah, but what's crazy is the
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Speaker 1: sea shepherds. They came out on top. I mean there
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Speaker 1: were at least six hundred and change whales that didn't
5:13
Speaker 1: lose their lives this year. Um, because in the Japanese
5:17
Speaker 1: said they call them sabuteurs, not activists. Um. But because
5:22
Speaker 1: these they were harassed the whole time. So it's working.
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Speaker 1: That's a huge victory. But um, whaling, I'm out there.
5:31
Speaker 1: I'm putting us out there, dude, because I think for
5:34
Speaker 1: most of our listeners in America, there's a lot of
5:36
Speaker 1: sympathy for whales. This isn't a whaling country. Although, um,
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Speaker 1: there is whaling in the US by indigenous groups Alaska, way,
5:45
Speaker 1: there's still are they grandfathered in? Yeah, there's about three
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Speaker 1: hundred a year. Roughly they take about three hundred whales
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Speaker 1: a year or no, I'm sorry, less than a hundred.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like a jerk saying that's not bad.
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Speaker 1: But compared to the old numbers, that's really not bad
6:01
Speaker 1: exactly right. Um, So I think there's a lot of
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Speaker 1: sympathy for whales. Yeah, apparently in Japan, even the younger generation,
6:10
Speaker 1: they're having a hard time talking them into being on board.
6:12
Speaker 1: Even though Japan, which we'll talk about, is is skirting
6:16
Speaker 1: some of these laws to continue to whale, and Japan
6:19
Speaker 1: is a whaling country, has been a whaling country since
6:22
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century. Um. So, yeah, the idea of killing
6:27
Speaker 1: a whale has gotten more and more stomach churning over
6:30
Speaker 1: the year. Agreed. So let's talk about how to do it. Okay, Uh,
6:34
Speaker 1: should we go the history first. I didn't talk to
6:36
Speaker 1: you about this beforehand like we normally do. Sometimes we do,
6:41
Speaker 1: so we never do. Yeah, we can talk about history.
6:44
Speaker 1: I think that's a good idea. Okay. Where did whaling start?
6:47
Speaker 1: It started in uh Spain and northwest Spain and southwest
6:51
Speaker 1: France by the Basques. Well that's commercial whaling. Oh well
6:55
Speaker 1: you're you're talking about just uh Nanook of the North
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Speaker 1: out there with this harpoon, sure, yeah, indigenous folks yeah,
7:02
Speaker 1: or Sandtok of the south. Yeah. Um, there's a good
7:05
Speaker 1: whale in down Antarctic away what still is yeah? Um,
7:10
Speaker 1: but not just them. The Norwegians have long been whaling cultures,
7:14
Speaker 1: same with the Icelandic. Yeah, true, Russians and they still
7:20
Speaker 1: ice in Iceland and Norway. Right, they're still at it. Yeah,
7:24
Speaker 1: now not so much these days. Were there at the
7:26
Speaker 1: very least getting a little more aware alright. So getting
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Speaker 1: back to the Basques, the first commercial whaling operations UM
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Speaker 1: as early as one thousand in the Bay of biz
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Speaker 1: K and then of course everyone else saw what was
7:41
Speaker 1: going on, jumped on board England in UH in North
7:47
Speaker 1: America in the early sixteen hundreds, Japan six. The US
7:52
Speaker 1: finally off Nantucket sevent twelve. So this this article kind
7:57
Speaker 1: of skirts over some really big stuff here, Like it
8:00
Speaker 1: basically goes from Nantucket to ven Foyn And when you jump,
8:05
Speaker 1: make that jump, you leave out the entire Golden Age
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Speaker 1: of whaling right in fifty year. So when you reach Nantucket,
8:14
Speaker 1: the you you encounter UM and there's this awesome ken
8:19
Speaker 1: Burns like two part series on UM whaling. If you're
8:22
Speaker 1: ever interested, it's definitely worth checking out this one. But
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Speaker 1: Nantucket became like the whaling capital of the world and
8:33
Speaker 1: thereby also became the commercial um engine of the world
8:39
Speaker 1: because whaling and whale oil uh came about at a
8:44
Speaker 1: time when the Industrial Revolution hit, and whale oil was
8:49
Speaker 1: to the world what fossil fuel oil is today. Pre petroleum,
8:54
Speaker 1: it was petroleum. Yeah, like it literally is what the
8:57
Speaker 1: world ran on and what we lit artificially our world with. Right,
9:01
Speaker 1: So UM New Bedford specifically in Nantucket or like the
9:06
Speaker 1: what Saudi Arabia is today, and whales out there in
9:09
Speaker 1: the ocean were basically like floating pieces of oil rich
9:13
Speaker 1: real estate that anybody with the ship could go claim.
9:15
Speaker 1: Is that why that area is so still so dollar heavy?
9:20
Speaker 1: Probably is that what got them going to begin with?
9:22
Speaker 1: Wer Yeah, and from like seventeen fifty to eighteen fifty
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Speaker 1: it was like one of the richest places in the world.
9:30
Speaker 1: So you can't quite skip over that. It's definitely worth mentioning.
9:34
Speaker 1: That's right, Those cold uh Atlantic waters up there, fertile
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Speaker 1: ground for whales, I imagine. Yeah, And they started out
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Speaker 1: by just um harvesting whales that washed up ashore. But um,
9:46
Speaker 1: that would have been a nice way to just keep
9:48
Speaker 1: it that way it was, But then the industrial revolution
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Speaker 1: hit and they're like, oh, whale, it really burns. Well,
9:54
Speaker 1: we can make candles out of it. If I dabbed
9:56
Speaker 1: some behind my ears, I'll use as a perfume, well,
10:00
Speaker 1: like a stinky whale. Yeah. But it isn't uh perfuman
10:04
Speaker 1: cosmetics and stuff like that, right it is. I think
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Speaker 1: it probably still isn't something in Japan, all right, So
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Speaker 1: are we ready for spin? Sure? The Norwegian Pioneer sven Foyn,
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Speaker 1: which is a great name. Uh. He launched the first
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Speaker 1: steam powered whaling ship in eighteen sixty three and then
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Speaker 1: invented a little something that really changed everything called the
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Speaker 1: harpoon cannon, which is pretty awful. It's not you know,
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Speaker 1: your harpoon a whale by hand up until that point,
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Speaker 1: and then now all of a sudden you could shoot
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Speaker 1: a harpoon with a cannon that would explode inside the whale.
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Speaker 1: Crazy sven Foyn is pretty much single handedly the reason
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Speaker 1: why we have such depleted and endangered whale stock today.
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Speaker 1: And I guess it didn't mess up the whale too
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Speaker 1: much with the explosion, and hopefully it was over because
10:56
Speaker 1: prior to that, um, killing a whale is very cult
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Speaker 1: when you are hand throwing a harpoon, right sure, And
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Speaker 1: that's how they did it. UM. So you had a
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Speaker 1: bunch of guys in little tiny boats like all throwing spears,
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Speaker 1: not necessarily harpoons, because the harpoon was used to towe
11:11
Speaker 1: the whale back whence it was dead, but like a
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Speaker 1: spear UM and the only way to kill it was
11:17
Speaker 1: to spirit in its gills, so that eventually it was
11:21
Speaker 1: stabbed enough that it would um aspirate and choke on
11:23
Speaker 1: its own blood. And it took a while, and it
11:27
Speaker 1: would swim about pretty pretty heavily for a little bit,
11:29
Speaker 1: is called a flurry, and then it would just go
11:32
Speaker 1: on its side finn up. And that's how you knew
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Speaker 1: the whale was dead. And you harpooned it, and all
11:37
Speaker 1: the whale boats towed it back to the boat for processing.
11:39
Speaker 1: So hopefully that explosion just killed it immediately. But I'll
11:42
Speaker 1: but it didn't. Yeah, but at the very least it
11:46
Speaker 1: must not have messed it up for harvesting processing, or
11:49
Speaker 1: else they probablyn't have done it. Um Well, you mentioned
11:52
Speaker 1: the threshing about very dangerous job back then. Definitely imagine
11:57
Speaker 1: it still is to a certain degree. But back then
12:00
Speaker 1: those little boats, large whale, much larger than your boat
12:04
Speaker 1: thrashing about. It's gonna capsize you. You could drown, You
12:07
Speaker 1: could slip on the boat with the blubber and the
12:10
Speaker 1: blood everywhere. Yeah, because I mean, we'll think about this.
12:13
Speaker 1: You have a whale ship, right, and that's where like
12:15
Speaker 1: everybody lives in stays. But to go hunt the whale
12:18
Speaker 1: when you're actually killing the whale, you're in a whale boat.
12:20
Speaker 1: And that's basically like the size of a rowboat. And
12:23
Speaker 1: that's what you're in with with a whale, Like, get
12:26
Speaker 1: off of me, get exactly. So lots of dudes died, uh.
12:30
Speaker 1: And then there's the disease of course, going to exotic
12:33
Speaker 1: and gross sports of call tuberculosis, what else, yellow fever, malaria,
12:38
Speaker 1: pretty much I would imagine the whole gambit, the whole
12:40
Speaker 1: gambit of sea board disease, scurvy, ricketts v D. Let's
12:46
Speaker 1: get real, yeah, um, And like you said, seven had
12:49
Speaker 1: a direct hand in leading to the depletion of the population,
12:53
Speaker 1: and starting in the early nineteen hundreds, things really started
12:58
Speaker 1: going south for the whale. Yeah. Numbers wise, yea, you
13:02
Speaker 1: want to rattle off a few of these, So like
13:05
Speaker 1: this is sven point everyone, this is fin Foin's work.
13:08
Speaker 1: I'd lay this clearly at his feet. In nineteen o four, UM,
13:12
Speaker 1: A hundred and eighty four whales uh were killed off
13:15
Speaker 1: of the South Atlantic island of South Georgia, right right
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Speaker 1: within ten years UM. It jumped to four right within
13:27
Speaker 1: ten years UM. Just blue whales alone, thirty eight were killed,
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Speaker 1: hundred and seventy six fin whales and twenty one thousand
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Speaker 1: eight hundred ninety four humpbacks were killed in that same
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Speaker 1: area within one decade. And that's just in that one area.
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Speaker 1: And also you you will note that blue whales and
13:46
Speaker 1: fin whales used to be out of the reach of
13:49
Speaker 1: um any kind of whale ship were they too fast
13:53
Speaker 1: and they could out maneuver and out out run any
13:56
Speaker 1: ship that was chasing them until Sven foy In introduced
13:59
Speaker 1: the steam power whales. Right, So it was just the
14:01
Speaker 1: sperm whales at first, is that right? Right? And sperm
14:05
Speaker 1: whale also, by the way, is what they were looking for,
14:07
Speaker 1: mainly because sperm oil was the best oil available, burned
14:11
Speaker 1: the cleanest and the brightest. And sperm whales also had
14:16
Speaker 1: something called sperm machetti, which is like this waxy substance
14:19
Speaker 1: in their head that you could use to cut the
14:21
Speaker 1: whale oil into candles. That worked really well. It was
14:24
Speaker 1: just like the best stuff. It was also way more
14:27
Speaker 1: valuable than regular whale oil. Yeah, how much did they produce?
14:32
Speaker 1: I had this year? Oh, they had like um to
14:35
Speaker 1: forty barrels, and there's like a whale oil per whale
14:39
Speaker 1: per sperm whale. Yeah, and that's wharrel was thirty one
14:42
Speaker 1: and a half gallons. Yea, so it's I did the
14:44
Speaker 1: math somewhere. Sixty gallons per sperm whale. Yeah. Well, and
14:49
Speaker 1: they would use every part of the whale. We'll at
14:51
Speaker 1: least give them that. It's not like shark fin soup,
14:54
Speaker 1: like cut off the shark fin and then dump the
14:55
Speaker 1: shark back in the water. They would try to use
14:58
Speaker 1: every part of the whale per sustenance. Um. So I
15:01
Speaker 1: guess we're going back to the beginning again, which is
15:03
Speaker 1: why did they do this to begin with? Because it
15:06
Speaker 1: couldn't grow veggies in a lot of these places, so
15:09
Speaker 1: whale was like what they subsisted on, subsided on, subsisted,
15:13
Speaker 1: subsisted on, subsided happened after they ran out of whale exactly. Um.
15:20
Speaker 1: So you know it's got a lot of protein, iron niacin,
15:24
Speaker 1: vitamin's A d C. Yeah, and that's like good stuff
15:27
Speaker 1: for them, right. And they figured out early on that
15:28
Speaker 1: they could burn the blubber too right to light and
15:31
Speaker 1: heat their iglues make sleds. That would help making sleds
15:36
Speaker 1: and tools out of baileeen whales. Teeth, I guess I
15:41
Speaker 1: should make air quotes teeth. Um, you can use it
15:44
Speaker 1: for all sorts of stuff. Imagine bones too. And this
15:48
Speaker 1: is back in the day that like before commercially and
15:50
Speaker 1: there's a long tradition of using all parts of the whale.
15:54
Speaker 1: But there's a huge difference between even a massive commercial
16:00
Speaker 1: enterprise like that were like the ones that were launched
16:02
Speaker 1: off of Nantucket that required sale power and hand thrown
16:08
Speaker 1: harpoons and then steam power boats and harpoon guns with
16:12
Speaker 1: explosive tips. There's a big difference, huge difference. And then
16:17
Speaker 1: the global demand also just kind of changed everything too. Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: Japan um post war, post World War two. Uh, they
16:26
Speaker 1: relied a lot on whales for for food. They were
16:29
Speaker 1: um pretty poor at the time after the war, trying
16:32
Speaker 1: to put the pieces back together, and whales were a
16:37
Speaker 1: big part of that. On the school lunch menu up
16:39
Speaker 1: into the nineteen sixties, even although it's not supposed to
16:42
Speaker 1: taste very good, is it. It's supposed to taste it
16:45
Speaker 1: says in this article like either reindeer or moose. Yeah,
16:48
Speaker 1: that's a fine slate, try it, I guess. Yeah, And
16:51
Speaker 1: that's what he had to say. Yeah, and it's not
16:53
Speaker 1: heavily spiced out of tradition, right. Uh. That is in
16:57
Speaker 1: Norway Iceland, in Alaska. Ok. Yeah, in Japan they spice
17:01
Speaker 1: the heck out of it, I guess so. I'm sure
17:03
Speaker 1: they say serve it as sashimi, which would mean that
17:07
Speaker 1: they probably don't. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of a
17:12
Speaker 1: s h phoneme tongue twisters in this one for me.
17:16
Speaker 1: You are right, No, Well, we'll persevere. So we're no
17:21
Speaker 1: longer running on um any kind of our Our economy
17:26
Speaker 1: doesn't run on whale oil any longer. No now raping
17:29
Speaker 1: the earth of petroleum. Right, but at least it doesn't
17:33
Speaker 1: you know, have babies. Um, So why are we still
17:40
Speaker 1: killing whales? Uh? Well, in Japan they have a loophole
17:45
Speaker 1: um under Article eight of the International Convention of the
17:49
Speaker 1: Regulation of Whaling that says that they are allowed to
17:54
Speaker 1: kill for research purposes. Technically anybody is yeah, but well
17:58
Speaker 1: yeah in Japan is the only one taking them up
18:00
Speaker 1: on it, saying yeah, this is for research, yes, but
18:03
Speaker 1: that is disputed, yes, because really the only um use
18:07
Speaker 1: these days for whales is meat. Right, So Japan um
18:14
Speaker 1: is through this international convention, they're not the only ones
18:17
Speaker 1: who can use um. Whale hunting for scientific research is
18:23
Speaker 1: a reason to kill whales right, um. But yeah, they're
18:26
Speaker 1: they're only criticized for it because there's other techniques that
18:30
Speaker 1: other countries used to study whale populations that don't require, um,
18:35
Speaker 1: the whale to die. Well. I don't get that to
18:37
Speaker 1: begin with, because what they're studying is what they're trying
18:40
Speaker 1: to prove is that there are actually more whales. And
18:43
Speaker 1: people are saying that's one of the things. They're saying
18:45
Speaker 1: one of the other things. And I should say that
18:47
Speaker 1: my source for this is Greenpeace, um. But they said
18:51
Speaker 1: they were saying that Japan routinely uses study study samples
18:57
Speaker 1: of populations of like five whales from the same area,
19:02
Speaker 1: which is a terrible way to study like a species. Um.
19:05
Speaker 1: And they are examining their stomach contents to find out
19:09
Speaker 1: about whale diets, and then they'll say, oh, well, these
19:14
Speaker 1: whales eat a lot of salmon, and salmon's are very
19:16
Speaker 1: commercially important, um fish, so we should kill more whales, right. Um.
19:23
Speaker 1: If you look at the Australians, they study whale diets too,
19:26
Speaker 1: but they track whale feces and they also study whale
19:30
Speaker 1: habits by keeping them alive and get more data by
19:33
Speaker 1: keeping them alive by just tagging them. Yeah, and they're
19:36
Speaker 1: one of the countries that's come out hardest against Japan
19:39
Speaker 1: and condemning them, right yeah. Yeah, the Australians were like, good,
19:43
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys made it back safely and early
19:46
Speaker 1: from your whale hunting season this year. So the Japanese
19:50
Speaker 1: are very much criticized for exploiting this, but under international
19:54
Speaker 1: law they can do this. And um, I guess the
19:58
Speaker 1: provision that allows science big whaling says if you catch
20:02
Speaker 1: a catch and kill a whale for scientific purposes, you
20:05
Speaker 1: have to use the whole whale. So they're saying, well,
20:08
Speaker 1: we've got to sell this as food, right. The the
20:11
Speaker 1: that's a huge loophole because it's basically like, yeah, if
20:14
Speaker 1: you say we're well here's this here's this study we're
20:17
Speaker 1: carrying out, you can just conduct commercial whaling, which is
20:20
Speaker 1: what they're doing. So um in now they were starting,
20:25
Speaker 1: they already were processing. Is that what you said earlier?
20:28
Speaker 1: They're already processing on board before. Yeah, So what happened then?
20:33
Speaker 1: Did it just? The factory ships made it even easier.
20:36
Speaker 1: They were just more outfitted with it. Yeah, they were
20:38
Speaker 1: kind of like d I Y processing whales beforehand, but
20:43
Speaker 1: they were definitely doing it during like the Golden Age
20:46
Speaker 1: off and Nantucket, where like you would capture a whale
20:49
Speaker 1: harpoon it. All of the guys who had just been
20:52
Speaker 1: fighting this thing for like hours would grow it back
20:55
Speaker 1: to the ship and they'd attach it with chains to
20:58
Speaker 1: the ship and then start skinning it like layer by layer. Yeah,
21:02
Speaker 1: they said it's like peeling an orange skin. And they
21:06
Speaker 1: would carve it up into blanket pieces. There were a
21:09
Speaker 1: ton a piece, Like some guys died for that. That
21:12
Speaker 1: was one of these people die was getting crushed by
21:14
Speaker 1: like a slab of blubber. Oh sure, a ton of
21:17
Speaker 1: whale blubber falling on you. That's not a good way
21:19
Speaker 1: to go. Um. And then they would haul these blanket
21:22
Speaker 1: pieces up and then divide them into what they call
21:25
Speaker 1: horse pieces. My guess is that that was about the
21:28
Speaker 1: size of a horse. Sure probably could still kill you.
21:31
Speaker 1: I imagine you die going. Then they would boil, boil out,
21:36
Speaker 1: extract extracting the blubber, the oil from the blubber. And
21:40
Speaker 1: this is all done on board, like with big iron
21:43
Speaker 1: pots and stoves. Pretty gnarly. Yeah, and um, there's blood everywhere,
21:49
Speaker 1: there's oily blubber everywhere. So one of the one of
21:52
Speaker 1: the great um dangers of the job was slipping on
21:56
Speaker 1: deck and falling overboard. You don't think that the waters
21:59
Speaker 1: around the ship they were skinning the um whale weren't
22:02
Speaker 1: just infested with sharks, So that was a very dangerous
22:07
Speaker 1: Part two. Uh so, once they had the oil um
22:12
Speaker 1: extracted from the blubber, they would actually go ahead and
22:16
Speaker 1: put it in the casks, stow it down in the hold,
22:19
Speaker 1: try and clean up the mess, even though there really
22:22
Speaker 1: is no cleaning up that mess, no, apparently not. And
22:25
Speaker 1: um then they just start over again, and like a
22:28
Speaker 1: whaling expedition, dude, was years long. They went for years,
22:33
Speaker 1: Like they just go out there because they could do
22:35
Speaker 1: this all um aboard their ship and they just live
22:39
Speaker 1: on the whale the whole time. They usually had provisions.
22:42
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would stop in Tortuga and pick up
22:45
Speaker 1: some provisions and some vds or whatever, beans and veneerial
22:48
Speaker 1: disease with their whale and um and then you know,
22:52
Speaker 1: go on their way. But like they would be away
22:55
Speaker 1: from home for years at a stretch. Yeah, so is
23:00
Speaker 1: a crazy life, all right. So let's uh flash forward
23:03
Speaker 1: a bit um factory ships in nineteen five were introduced,
23:07
Speaker 1: which really ramped up the killing and sixty years in
23:11
Speaker 1: the sixty years following that, more than two million whales
23:15
Speaker 1: were killed in the Southern hemisphere. So that's when people countries,
23:19
Speaker 1: the League of Nations specifically sat up and said, you
23:23
Speaker 1: know what, in one we should put together some sort
23:27
Speaker 1: of legislation to regulate this, and they's pretty cool. For
23:33
Speaker 1: twenty six countries got on board. Um, except for Japan,
23:37
Speaker 1: Germany and Russia. Uh. Then ten years later, uh, in
23:41
Speaker 1: nineteen I'm sorry. Five years later they established the International
23:45
Speaker 1: Agreement for Regulation of Whaling, and again Japan said no thanks.
23:51
Speaker 1: And that year there was a record high of forty
23:54
Speaker 1: six thousand, thirty nine whales killed in the Antarctic alone.
23:58
Speaker 1: It still is the record. And you know, they've tried
24:02
Speaker 1: these different things over the years, but basically what I
24:04
Speaker 1: gathered was there was never any enforcement. No, the the
24:07
Speaker 1: i WC has no teeth. They have by lean that's it.
24:11
Speaker 1: So they can't really they can't do anything that was
24:14
Speaker 1: off the cuff. Was really, um, well, then they can't
24:17
Speaker 1: do anything like you can sit there and make up
24:19
Speaker 1: regulations all day, but Japan can just say no, we're
24:22
Speaker 1: not gonna do it, I think, and be like, hey,
24:24
Speaker 1: that would hurt our economy. Sorry, we understand that you
24:26
Speaker 1: feel for the whales, but we're whaling. So what are
24:29
Speaker 1: you gonna do? And they they say, oh, yeah, we forgot.
24:33
Speaker 1: There's no sanctions that we can carry out against you.
24:36
Speaker 1: We can police, we can condemn it. Yeah, there's no
24:39
Speaker 1: whale police, see shepherds, but their rogue. Yeah, they do
24:43
Speaker 1: a good job apparently. Whether or not you agree with
24:45
Speaker 1: their methods is one thing. But they certainly made a
24:48
Speaker 1: difference this year. Uh. Flash forward again to nineteen six
24:54
Speaker 1: UM when they banned commercial whaling altogether, again rejected by Japan,
25:00
Speaker 1: in Norway and Russia. But in that in that UM convention,
25:06
Speaker 1: there was that loophole for scientific research. There's also I
25:09
Speaker 1: think always been exceptions for indigenous groups too. Um. But
25:15
Speaker 1: the uh, the the big loophole was the scientific whaling one.
25:19
Speaker 1: That's the one that they continue exploiting because everybody's like,
25:23
Speaker 1: we're not doing any commercial way, like we're just licensing,
25:27
Speaker 1: issuing scientific whaling licenses to these commercial whaling out Now
25:32
Speaker 1: early you said the United States still does with that.
25:34
Speaker 1: Is that just indigenous peoples? Yeah? Um, And there was something.
25:39
Speaker 1: I couldn't find out what happened, man, But I saw
25:41
Speaker 1: this like chart of whaling and from since n UM
25:47
Speaker 1: it's had an impact that the convention, that treaty had
25:50
Speaker 1: an impact, because if you look at UM overall total
25:54
Speaker 1: kills UM they call him catches, it's declined just trem
26:00
Speaker 1: endlessly since then. It's just since the band was put
26:03
Speaker 1: in place. Yeah, and then I saw for nineteen, for
26:06
Speaker 1: two thousand nine eight, around eight nine hundred killed for
26:11
Speaker 1: the world that year compared to forty six thousand in
26:14
Speaker 1: Antarctica alone, which is pretty crazy. The key is is
26:18
Speaker 1: whether that number can be kept down in pace with
26:23
Speaker 1: the if that can outrun the decline of whale population
26:28
Speaker 1: so that there aren't any extinction events before whaling just
26:32
Speaker 1: ceases or before the stocks can be um stabilized refurbished. Yeah,
26:42
Speaker 1: I think there's like a real definite like race against
26:44
Speaker 1: the clock thing that's going on right now with whale populations.
26:47
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly when we did it must have
26:49
Speaker 1: been when we did the the Swim with the Whales podcast.
26:54
Speaker 1: I think I remember something about the way they reproduced
26:56
Speaker 1: or reproduct reproductive cycles really long, so they have a
27:00
Speaker 1: hard time re establish thing. It's not like they're having
27:02
Speaker 1: little whale pups every every year or two. So that
27:06
Speaker 1: probably has something to do. And I think they stick
27:08
Speaker 1: around like with their parents, like they raised and nurse.
27:10
Speaker 1: They're young for a very long time as well. They're
27:14
Speaker 1: just like dead beats in the basement couch waiting around
27:17
Speaker 1: listening to Pink Floyd. You like Pink Floyd. Oh, yes
27:21
Speaker 1: I do. There's two thanks the doors and Pink Floyd.
27:25
Speaker 1: Very nice. So what does the future hold, Mr Clark? Well,
27:30
Speaker 1: not being a prognosticator myself, I don't feel comfortable predicting
27:34
Speaker 1: the future. But I don't know, man, I'm surprised by
27:37
Speaker 1: the um that that news report that you you gave me,
27:43
Speaker 1: like that the c Shepherds were having like that kind
27:45
Speaker 1: of effect. I figured that they would be a nuisance,
27:48
Speaker 1: not an effective activist militant group. Well they reased it
27:54
Speaker 1: up a couple of years ago too. They rammed each
27:55
Speaker 1: other supposedly. Yeah, but I got the impression from this
27:58
Speaker 1: article that it was like, all right, I'm on board
28:01
Speaker 1: your vessel and I can't really do anything and they're like, oh,
28:03
Speaker 1: you can't do anything either, And you know, it was
28:06
Speaker 1: like that that encounter was a the representation of just that,
28:12
Speaker 1: like the idea what the id WC does with whaling.
28:15
Speaker 1: It's like there's nothing you can do. Really, no one's
28:18
Speaker 1: able to do anything that has a real impact. But
28:21
Speaker 1: apparently they figured it out. So what happened was in
28:24
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, they claimed the Japanese ship rammed the
28:29
Speaker 1: Sea Shepherd ship, sinking it, and so the dudes from
28:33
Speaker 1: c Shepherd went aboard the whaling ship and that's when
28:35
Speaker 1: they just said, we can't do anything, so let's have
28:38
Speaker 1: a tickle fight. Pretty much, he was going to make
28:40
Speaker 1: a citizen's rest. Come on, that's like one thing. If
28:44
Speaker 1: you don't carry it out, you don't tell anybody. You
28:46
Speaker 1: were going to do that, right, you know, like I'm
28:50
Speaker 1: gonna make a citizen's rest. I was going to write
28:54
Speaker 1: you should just tackle them or something. I'll bet that
28:56
Speaker 1: that was all over Discovery Channel too, Yeah, probably, so,
29:01
Speaker 1: um so anything else. I don't have anything else other
29:05
Speaker 1: than to say, uh, you know, if this is important
29:08
Speaker 1: to you, pay attention, because there's always I think they
29:11
Speaker 1: met just last year about this again. It's like an
29:14
Speaker 1: ongoing battle to keep these regulations in place. So oh,
29:18
Speaker 1: I've got another one. Let's hear um. If you root
29:22
Speaker 1: for whales, you should check out the story of the Essex,
29:25
Speaker 1: which inspired Moby Dick. Um. It's the only known ship
29:31
Speaker 1: to have been sunk apparently purposely, purposefully by a whale
29:36
Speaker 1: ramming it. Whale rammed it, turned around, got speed and
29:41
Speaker 1: rammed it again and ended up sinking the Essex and
29:44
Speaker 1: sent like the twenty crew members on like this horrible
29:47
Speaker 1: journey um where they were adrift in the South Pacific
29:52
Speaker 1: and they avoided islands that were close by because they're
29:55
Speaker 1: afraid of cannibals. But in their attempt for South America,
29:57
Speaker 1: they began to starve in resort to cannibalism themselves. Wow.
30:02
Speaker 1: That's an ironic twist, didn't it. I've never read Moby Dick.
30:04
Speaker 1: Can you believe that I do? I have not read
30:07
Speaker 1: it either, so really yeah, I know? Wow? What we
30:09
Speaker 1: need to get that done? Okay, let's go read Moby
30:11
Speaker 1: Dick right now, chuck, okay. Um, while we read Moby Dick,
30:14
Speaker 1: you should learn more about whaling. You could type that
30:17
Speaker 1: into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com,
30:20
Speaker 1: which means it's time for listener mail. Josh I'm gonna
30:26
Speaker 1: call this good organization in Austin, Texas, which we were
30:29
Speaker 1: just at and um, this is sent from Patrick who
30:33
Speaker 1: was at our variety show that'll be through. He said,
30:36
Speaker 1: great show, guys. I was pleasantly surprised with the quote
30:40
Speaker 1: unquote acting in the pilot by y'all, and I look
30:44
Speaker 1: forward to tuning in later. Quote unquote acting is accurate exactly. Uh.
30:49
Speaker 1: They He's involved though, with a new nonprofit and I
30:52
Speaker 1: told him he would plug it. Um Retreat r E
30:56
Speaker 1: lowercase capital t r e E or case t. Let
31:01
Speaker 1: see where we're going here, t r e E t
31:06
Speaker 1: retreat Okay, not t r E A t H. They
31:11
Speaker 1: plant trees UM. They are a kaleidoscopic group of bicycle
31:16
Speaker 1: and tree enthusiasts with strong backs, sharp minds, and big
31:19
Speaker 1: hearts who volunteer to replant communities. The group formed in
31:24
Speaker 1: response to the Basstrop wildfires that took place during the
31:28
Speaker 1: summer of aught eleven. The way you can't say eleven
31:32
Speaker 1: it's bullets in, isn't it um? Just outside of Austin, Texas.
31:38
Speaker 1: During two days in January, Retreat America planted over two
31:42
Speaker 1: d trees and put eighty miles on their bikes. UM
31:45
Speaker 1: they're heading back to Basstroup for another round of tree
31:47
Speaker 1: planning March, which is right now, so by the time
31:54
Speaker 1: this comes out, that'll be be over. But you can
31:56
Speaker 1: still support him by going to Facebook dot com Ash
32:00
Speaker 1: retreat with two Ease America. It's a brand new group.
32:04
Speaker 1: They're trying to spread the word, so just a little
32:06
Speaker 1: awareness is what they're looking for, and they have some
32:09
Speaker 1: mandates here. One is to plant as many donated trees
32:13
Speaker 1: native trees as possible for homeowners affected by natural disasters.
32:18
Speaker 1: To harness the spirit of volunteerism that exists in everyone.
32:23
Speaker 1: Harness it and beat it with the stick number three
32:26
Speaker 1: and live in communities socially and economically in the aftermath
32:30
Speaker 1: of disasters. Number four. Stimulate stewardship and invigorate a local
32:34
Speaker 1: desire to rehabilitate the damage land stimilated. With the stick.
32:38
Speaker 1: Number five, spread proper tree planting and care techniques. Stick
32:45
Speaker 1: number six foster appreciation for UH and involvement in uh abericulture.
32:52
Speaker 1: How many UH lists of the how many demands do
32:55
Speaker 1: they have to have? One more? UM encourage the use
32:58
Speaker 1: of bicycles within the urban and vironment. Finally, we get
33:01
Speaker 1: the bicycles. So Patrick, y'all are doing great work. Austin
33:05
Speaker 1: is one of our favorite places now to visit and
33:08
Speaker 1: retreat America. You should support go check him out bike
33:14
Speaker 1: person or a tree person or if you hate trees
33:16
Speaker 1: and you love your car, then there's probably an organization
33:20
Speaker 1: for you, dude. We should also give a shout out
33:23
Speaker 1: to the contest winner who we met and hung out with. Yeah,
33:26
Speaker 1: Caleb Caleb. Did he sign a release to say his liscening. Oh,
33:31
Speaker 1: we'll just say Caleb w from Dallas. Yeah, he came out.
33:35
Speaker 1: He won the House Stuff Works Facebook contest and um,
33:39
Speaker 1: he came out, hung out with us. We we went,
33:41
Speaker 1: We went out to lunch. We took him on a
33:43
Speaker 1: tour of the office, tak him out for a very
33:45
Speaker 1: nice lunch. Um. The resulted in food poisoning for me.
33:49
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear that, and um it was. It
33:53
Speaker 1: was very tasty though. Yeah, and he went to UM
33:55
Speaker 1: I followed up with him. He did go to the
33:57
Speaker 1: King Center after he left us. Yeah, he was keen
33:59
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, he went. He'd been studying the life
34:01
Speaker 1: of Martin Luther King and was excited to go visit.
34:03
Speaker 1: We uh told him how to get there, and he
34:06
Speaker 1: went and he went to the King Center and his
34:08
Speaker 1: original house that he lived in. It's like all in
34:11
Speaker 1: the same area, and his church I think as well.
34:14
Speaker 1: So yeah, he checked it all and he said, it's
34:16
Speaker 1: really cool. It was very cool. So Caleb, we're glad
34:19
Speaker 1: you were here. You were a really nice dude. Yeah,
34:20
Speaker 1: you really were. It really could have gone a different
34:23
Speaker 1: way and we were very fortunate that you were the winner.
34:25
Speaker 1: That's right, So congratulations to you again. Um, let's see
34:29
Speaker 1: Chuck Whaling stories. Do you think anybody has one? I
34:32
Speaker 1: doubt it. Alright, let's find out. Let's hear your Whaling story.
34:36
Speaker 1: You can tweak to us at s Y s K podcast.
34:39
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook at Facebook dot com,
34:43
Speaker 1: Stupid Timeline, Facebook dot com, slash stuff you should Know um,
34:47
Speaker 1: and you can send us an email at Stuff Podcast
34:50
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our
34:58
Speaker 1: new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join houste Works
35:02
Speaker 1: staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
35:05
Speaker 1: of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
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