Whales and dolphins are a regular sight in Irish waters. If you’ve ever taken the ferry to Rathlin or Cape Clear, there’s a good chance you passed some dolphins en route. Dingle had a resident dolphin called Fungie, Clare has Dusty, while Finn has recently made Carlingford Lough his home. Whales are spotted less often, but still frequently enough to support a small tourist industry in west Cork.
Increasingly, cetaceans are encountered when they wash up or become stranded on our beaches. Last month a common dolphin was found dead at Courtown and a pilot whale at Fethard, both in Co Wexford, while a huge sperm whale washed up on Carrownisky Beach in Mayo. Another sperm whale, this one alive, was beached outside Grimbsy in England.
The rate of beaching and strandings appears to be increasing, mirroring a worldwide trend. In September, two mass strandings on Tasmanian beaches left hundreds of whales dead. The Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court, has ordered fisheries to close after a winter that saw more than 400 dolphins wash up dead off the Bay of Biscay.
By the early 19th century, the trade was dominated by the United States, where rapid industrialisation was made possible by whale oil
Humans have been hunting whales for thousands of years, with evidence of pre-Bronze Age consumption in Japan and Norway; both countries continue to whale despite a global moratorium. The early commercial trade was dominated by Basque and Dutch sailors, who established stations as far afield as Labrador and Svalbard. Early techniques involved forced stranding, where small boats were used to block escape to the open sea and drive smaller cetaceans on to land.
As maritime technology improved, it increased the potential to go after larger whales in deeper water. These slower, larger whales were easier to hunt, and, because of the amount of blubber they contain, were lucrative prizes and easy to float to shore. Baleen, sometimes called whalebone but in fact made up of keratin, was used to make anything requiring a flexible support, including baskets, corsets, and skirts.
Blubber was rendered to make whale oil, used as lamp fuel, lubricant and soap. By the early 19th century, the trade was dominated by the United States, where rapid industrialisation was made possible by whale oil. The industry caused a big decline in the population of Atlantic whales while further technological development such as rocket harpoons allowed whalers to target the largest species. Ironically, the discovery of petrochemical engineering might have saved whales from extinction. Kerosene was cheaper, had less odour and quickly supplanted whale oil as a fuel.
As an island on the edge of the Atlantic, Ireland has an extensive coastline and encounters with cetaceans in our littoral areas are to be expected. Yet we were minor players in the history of whaling. Irish whaling operated from Blacksod Bay in Mayo during 1900-1925, killing hundreds but failing to prove economically viable. The Whale Fisheries Act in 1937 eventually banned the practice.
Ireland’s biggest contribution to the study of whales comes from an accidental stranding. In March 1891 a blue whale was stranded on a sandbar just off Wexford. After struggling for several days, it was killed, butchered and its skeleton sold to the Natural History Museum in London. In 2017 this skeleton of the largest animal ever to have lived replaced the replica diplodocus in the museum’s entrance hall.
Whales beached today are unlikely to end up in museums, although a sei whale found in Down last September will hopefully be donated to the Ulster Museum. Fans of children’s literature will be familiar with the snail that summoned firefighters to dig out a stranded humpback, but the unfortunate reality is that most will die and prove tricky to remove. A whale washed ashore in Mayo last autumn was still there weeks later, presenting a health hazard. Because of their size, gases can build up and cause the whales to violently explode. Although they are usually towed out to sea and dumped, authorities sometimes take a less orthodox approach.
When a sperm whale washed up in Oregon in 1970, the local government decided to dynamite it in front of a crowd and journalists. Using half a tonne of explosives, they managed only to succeed in raining huge chunks of blubber on to onlookers and nearby cars and buildings. The scene was captured for posterity by local television station KATU and is well worth five minutes of your time.
Stuart Mathieson is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of History and Geography at Dublin City University