The Worst Hunt in History

0:06 We document every encounter.

0:08 We don't understand the people that eat them.

0:11 But for most of history,

0:14 the relationship between humans and whales was defined by violence.

0:19 For ages, brave men risked their lives in tiny boats to hunt these mammals.

0:23 Their oil lit the biggest cities in the world.

0:27 In less than a century, humanity killed 3 million whales.

0:32 This was the biggest hunt in history, driving them to the brink of extinction.

0:39 And then, it stopped.

0:42 This is a story of how capitalism changed whaling

0:44 from a holy ritual to an impersonal killing spree.

0:48 A war between profit seeking sailors and the biggest mammals on the planet.

0:52 How a song changed our perspective, saving these animals from extinction.

0:57 From us seeing whales as gods and monsters

1:03 to intelligent mammals that deserve to be saved.

1:14 [MUSIC PLAYING] As long as mankind have existed,

1:23 they've had a special relationship with water.

1:31 Rivers and seas provide opportunities for transport, trade, and animal protein.

1:36 But leaving land was never without risk.

1:40 Storms could destroy your ship.

1:43 And who knows what lurked in the depths of the ocean.

1:46 Sailors told stories of encountering terrifying sea creatures,

1:50 beasts with huge blowholes and sharp teeth.

1:54 In the Bible, it is a sea monster, Leviathan, that eats the damned.

1:59 Jonah is swallowed by a whale for three days and nights.

2:02 And the Japanese god Ebisu has links to the sea mammal.

2:07 But for most of human history, whales were prey.

2:12 [WHALE SOUNDS] This topic has fascinated me for 10 years.

2:21 I want to show you something.

2:24 This is the Scheepvaartmuseum.

2:26 I actually used to work here as a guide about 10 years ago.

2:30 This video is not sponsored by them.

2:33 But they have a really nice exhibition about the whale that I want to show you.

2:37 [MUSIC PLAYING] But first, what is a whale?

2:43 There are around 90 different species of whale or cetaceans.

2:47 Like us, they are mammals.

2:49 And like us, it's a family defined by extremes.

2:53 It includes a dolphin that is so smart it can recognize itself in a mirror,

2:57 the sperm whale that is the loudest animal alive, and the blue whale,

3:02 the biggest creature in the entire history of the planet.

3:06 Whales use their fat, called blubber,

3:09 as a way to store energy and as insulation against the cold.

3:14 They come in different sizes and shapes.

3:15 But there's one big difference between them.

3:17 You have toothed whales, like the sperm whale.

3:21 And then you have baleen whales, like the big blue whale.

3:26 Baleens are these long strips in the mouth of these whales.

3:29 They're made of the same material as your fingernails or your hair.

3:33 And they use these to take big gulps

3:35 of water and trap small organisms in these baleens.

3:38 It is the slower baleen whales that were the first targets for humans.

3:44 The harpoon hits the whale in the flank.

3:48 Scared, it tries to swim away.

3:50 For the sailors, this is a dangerous moment.

3:54 If the whale dives or swims under an ice flu,

3:58 the boat can catch ice, dropping the men into the freezing waters of the Arctic.

4:06 Long before Europeans sailed to the North Pole to hunt,

4:09 Inuit people ate stranded whales and hunted on open waters.

4:13 In these cultures, a stranded whale was a gift from God.

4:16 The whale literally sacrificed itself to help the Inuit survive.

4:20 The skin provided the much needed vitamin C.

4:23 The blubber was food.

4:25 And the bones were used to build sleds and homes.

4:28 And this hunting was very ritualistic.

4:32 Hunters needed to be pure so they

4:34 couldn't sleep with their wives before the hunt.

4:37 And they also believed that the soul of the whale would return to the sea.

4:41 And so they mourned the killing of each whale.

4:44 Some think this ritualistic whaling culture might have

4:47 expanded all the way from Japan to Greenland.

4:51 But another culture came around that did things much differently.

4:58 In Europe, whaling from the shore was also established in some places.

5:08 But there was one people that really changed the game.

5:12 This is believed to be the first print of whaling in Europe.

5:15 Here, the hunters strike these classical poses as they throw their harpoons.

5:20 The helpless whales look like big fish.

5:23 On the shore, the hunters cut up the whale.

5:26 And the valuable blubber is rolled away.

5:29 The men on these images are believed to be Basque sailors,

5:32 a small community in northern Spain.

5:35 The Basques gave us the world for harpoon, coming from Arpoi to take quickly.

5:53 The Basques did not hunt whale to survive on the meat.

5:56 They did not mourn the whales they killed.

5:59 They hunted for profit.

6:01 And very important, when their home whales were depleted,

6:05 they established new whaling grounds all over the Atlantic.

6:09 The Basque way would become the blueprint for a whaling

6:12 industry that almost got rid of all the whales.

6:16 An industry with a lot of competition, always a need to innovate.

6:20 And when resources in one location are depleted,

6:22 you just move on to the next one.

6:25 The classic story of capitalism.

6:28 Other nations saw how good the Basques were at killing whales.

6:34 So the English and the Dutch started hiring them as whaling consultants.

6:39 And then in the 1600s, the Dutch become the biggest whalers of them all.

6:43 The Dutch set up shop here in the north at a place called Spitsbergen.

6:47 It's Dutch for pointy mountains.

6:50 But they also had to expand their hunting grounds further

6:53 and further because they just hunt too much of them.

6:56 This is the kind of whales they were hunting at the start.

7:03 This is called a Greenland right whale.

7:05 And it was a right whale because of two things.

7:08 It was very slow.

7:10 And when it was dead, it would float.

7:13 So then it's easy to tow it along.

7:17 And you can actually, you can go inside.

7:21 (upbeat music) Big boy.

7:24 To get an idea of the size, this is the heart of a Greenland right whale.

7:31 Holy shit.

7:35 Today is not the day of the whale.

7:38 As it tires, the boat comes closer.

7:41 The sailor in front aims a lance at its heart.

7:46 This will mean death.

7:48 (upbeat music) But if they hunt for profit, what do they sell?

7:53 The answer is the blubber.

7:57 This fat of the whales is boiled to become oil.

8:00 And people can burn this oil for elimination.

8:02 This is a huge deal before we have electricity.

8:06 There were some alternatives,

8:07 but they were all more expensive than the whale oil.

8:11 Another reason they are hunting these animals is they can use the baleens.

8:16 And you can basically use it as plastic before we had plastic.

8:24 For the Europeans, these whales fixed a lot of their problems.

8:38 With all this whaling, people get a better idea of what they were.

8:41 They get interested in anatomy of the whales.

8:44 You can see it in this image of a stranded whale.

8:47 It attracts huge crowds.

8:49 People that are interested to see what kind of insights the whale has,

8:53 it can give you the oil they need.

8:56 The people coming here to look and finding out that whales,

8:59 dead whales are actually quite stinky.

9:02 With this lady covering her mouth, they're measuring how big the whale is.

9:06 They're measuring how big the tail is.

9:08 They're measuring...

9:11 In images, they change from these fish-like monsters

9:15 with huge blowholes and scarred teeth to something more recognizable.

9:19 Yet, if you look at this print,

9:21 the supernatural is still connected to these beings.

9:25 Here, a stranding of a whale is seen as a bad omen.

9:29 Death is striking the city of Amsterdam.

9:32 It is in the next phase of whaling that this will change.

9:36 From a mysterious monster,

9:38 the whale will transform into nothing more than a product.

9:43 As the mystery of the whale died out,

9:45 the mystery of what to do with your life burned stronger than ever.

9:50 Before pursuing YouTube, I had a different career.

9:53 For 40 hours a week, I went to an office, commuting two hours every day.

9:57 After some time, I noticed that often my biggest daily

10:00 achievement was to have replied to all my incoming emails.

10:04 Shortly after that, I saw a terrifying

10:07 statistic about how much life is spent working.

10:10 I decided to make a change.

10:12 I had now devolved my time to making jokes about whale penises.

10:16 Since doing that, I've had a lot of friends and people

10:19 come up to me to congratulate me on this brave choice.

10:22 They tell me they appreciate it, I've found something I really want to pursue.

10:26 This string of text is for them.

10:28 80,000 Hours is a non-profit that can help you find a job

10:32 that you feel happy about and does good in the world.

10:35 They have a well-researched career guide to give you a direction,

10:38 a job board with listings for a high-impact career path,

10:41 and a podcast to listen to.

10:43 This is all free of charge,

10:45 so be sure to check out how 80,000 Hours can change your career and your life.

10:56 This oil gives the cleanest and most

10:58 beautiful flame of any substance known to nature.

11:01 The Dutch got outcompeted by the English and then the Americans.

11:05 The center of whaling moved to the United States.

11:08 And I have to show you a map.

11:11 This is a historical atlas of the United States.

11:14 It shows how America is definitely different

11:19 from other imperial powers in the past.

11:24 But we're not interested in that right now,

11:26 because this map also shows a different thing.

11:29 There is one word that is repeated everywhere on this map.

11:33 This map tells you that in the 1800s, whales were not safe anywhere.

11:37 The Americans would go global.

11:41 From the Arctic to Antarctica, from Madagascar to New Zealand,

11:44 ships, crews and gear got bigger.

11:47 Sailors were away for years on end.

11:49 Take this obituary of a sailor from that time.

11:52 He had been in exile from home for nearly 35 years,

11:56 having spent about five years of his time with his family.

12:00 And they were also hunting a new prey that was faster,

12:03 had sharp teeth, was more dangerous.

12:05 I found one tooth had entered my head, breaking in my skull.

12:10 My jaw and five teeth were broken, tongue cut through.

12:13 My left hand was pierced with a tooth.

12:15 It was favorable.

12:16 I retained my senses.

12:18 Sperm whales are toothed whales.

12:20 They hunt giant squid with it,

12:22 as the scars of many of these mature whales will tell you.

12:25 That means they don't have the valuable baleens that the right whales do have.

12:30 But they did have more clean and stable burning oil.

12:34 And they have a liquid wax in their head

12:37 that made the best can of money can buy.

12:39 And this wax smelled like, well, semen.

12:44 And in the early 1800s, the world desperately needs oil.

12:47 People are moving from the countryside to the cities.

12:51 Whale oil lights the house they live in, the streets

12:54 they walk on, and the factories they work in.

12:57 Whale oil lubricates the machines that are transforming the whole world.

13:02 Whale oil literally fueled the Industrial Revolution.

13:05 So when the British blocked the import of American whale oil,

13:10 founding father John Adams, he's surprised.

13:12 That you prefer darkness and consequent robberies,

13:15 burglaries and murders in your streets to the receiving of our spermaceti oil.

13:20 And it is, of course, sperm whale that is the obsession of one Captain Ahab

13:24 in the book "Moby Dick." It's an icon of American

13:28 literature that honestly for me has a special place

13:31 as the most boring book I ever tried to read.

13:36 Sorry.

13:37 At the height of American whaling,

13:39 they were killing over 10,000 whales all over the globe.

13:42 Progress often comes at a price, I guess.

13:45 This whaling was not sustainable.

13:47 The smaller catches, the competition of oil oils to light homes,

13:51 and competition from Norwegians killed the US whaling industry.

13:55 (gentle music) At this point,

13:58 it could still be a somewhat happy end to a gruesome story.

14:04 Tens of thousands of whales had been caught.

14:07 The right whales were gone from many places.

14:10 But even with all this killing, there are still a lot of other whales

14:14 in the ocean with the biggest whale of all practically untouched.

14:20 Could be a happy end because the hunt had just started.

14:25 (gentle music) One modern factory ship can take more whales

14:31 in one season than the entire American whaling fleet of 1846,

14:36 which numbered over 700 vessels.

14:39 In the 1800s, whales had become just another product.

14:43 Whale oil was everywhere.

14:45 Women were wearing corsets from baleen.

14:48 But whaling was still a dangerous adventure.

14:52 Men were going out in small boats hunting this fierce opponent.

14:55 It is one man that completely changed that.

14:59 Sven Foynd invents a new murder machine, the harpoon grenade.

15:04 This is a harpoon fired by a gun that lodged itself in the whale and explodes.

15:10 The whaler's fish captain gets ready his harpoon gun.

15:14 The Sven Foynd gun, invented by a Scandinavian of that name.

15:18 As unsubtle as effective, it forever changed the hunt for whales.

15:26 (upbeat music) Together with innovations like steam powered saws,

15:35 pumping dead whales full of air so they don't sink,

15:42 catching a whale becomes cheaper and cheaper.

15:44 In 1850, it took 26 hours to process an adult sperm whale.

15:49 In the 1920s, it could be done in less than one.

15:54 And so from wooden ships and small sloops,

15:58 they evolve into these huge industrial factory ships.

16:03 They can get a whale in the back here and then on this deck,

16:08 they can completely take it apart, get everything they need from the whale.

16:12 And you don't even need a base on land anymore.

16:17 And now they're able to set their sights

16:19 on the biggest whales of all, the blue whale.

16:21 And the numbers are just staggering.

16:24 This is a chart that shows whaling in the last century.

16:27 The line just goes up and up and up.

16:30 The only good time for whales is when

16:33 humans are bankrupt or too busy killing each other.

16:36 All the killing does make some men uncomfortable.

16:41 We never wanted to know too much about them.

16:43 It was too much like murder as it was.

16:45 There are times when too much knowledge can stand in a man's way.

16:50 But for the rest of the people with the killing far from home,

16:54 a whale has already long turned into just a product.

16:58 Whale margarine now makes it to the shops.

17:01 Whale meat is used as animal food.

17:04 And the whale in Disney's Pinocchio is still a monster.

17:09 (dramatic music) But already after the First World War,

17:13 some nations are thinking, maybe this whaling is going too far.

17:18 They sort of try to regulate themselves, but that doesn't work.

17:23 And when then after the Second World War,

17:24 the International Whaling Committee is set up, nothing much changes.

17:29 All nations need food and animal fat.

17:31 So whaling only goes up.

17:33 In the IWC, they spend their time disagreeing over how much whaling is enough.

17:38 They take 20 years to put a ban on hunting the blue whale.

17:42 And by that time, there are almost none left.

17:45 The case for the whalers was put

17:47 by the Norwegian chairman of the International Whaling Commission

17:49 when I asked him if it was true that the whale is in danger of extinction.

17:54 The number of whales of certain species are far below,

17:58 above what actually could still be exploited.

18:02 But society is changing.

18:05 (gentle music) New documentaries about the sea make

18:09 the marine world interesting to a wider audience.

18:14 The ocean floor is a dream world, silent, vast, mystic, unreal,

18:21 lonely beyond words, beauty that haunts one, majesty all its own.

18:27 You get films like "Flipper" that show dolphins in a good light,

18:30 and whales are suddenly seen as playful, as smart,

18:33 as closer to humans than they had thought before.

18:37 And it is one man that has an outsized impact on how we see these sea mammals.

18:42 Off Bermuda, a herd of the once numerous humpback whales appears each spring.

18:47 An acoustical biologist from Rockefeller University, Roger Payne,

18:50 meets them there each year and lowers

18:54 special underwater microphones to record their songs.

18:59 I had noticed that no one ever seems to be interested

19:02 in saving a species unless they fall in love with it first.

19:06 Because whale songs are so alluring,

19:08 I had hoped that if enough people heard them,

19:10 they might rise in anger and force whaling to stop.

19:18 (mouse clicking) (waves crashing) (waves crashing)- The record

19:40 that he releases with the whale sounds sells 100,000 copies.

19:58 The impact of this can't be overstated.

20:00 Whales suddenly have culture.

20:03 They're seen as close to humans.

20:05 This album is an inspiration for the founding of organizations like Greenpeace.

20:09 They started Save the Whale campaign.

20:12 When Voyager One is launched,

20:15 it carries the song of the humpback whales into space.

20:20 (waves crashing) Under public and American pressure, the IWC finally cracks.

20:28 In 1986, international whaling grinds to a halt.

20:33 In under a century, the world had killed almost three million whales.

20:39 In terms of biomass, this is the biggest hunt in the history of mankind.

20:44 And it now has been stopped.

20:46 To see how this was possible, take this account of sperm whales.

20:51 In 200 years, humans had killed about 300,000 sperm whales.

20:55 Then with industrial whaling,

20:56 they killed the same number in the first 60 years of the 20th century.

21:02 And then again, 300,000 in just 10 years.

21:11 Whaling hasn't actually stopped.

21:12 In 2024, three industrial nations are still doing it.

21:16 It says a lot about our changing perspectives that that is now widely condemned.

21:22 And contrary to what you think, it is not just Japan doing it.

21:26 At the same time, we can ask ourselves if the whale is not still a product.

21:31 Now it's just more profitable to us alive than dead.

21:34 They're hunting whales off the California coast.

21:36 No harpoons, the most deadly weapon is a camera.

21:40 As boatloads of the adventurous head out to sea

21:43 for a close look at the gray whale migration.

21:46 Even with all that, whales have made a journey from mythical monsters

21:50 to a product to an animal that symbolizes our treatment of the planet.

21:58 It shows how our cultures can change.

22:00 We are now disgusted by the whales that get killed for food.

22:04 It's almost as bad as those people that eat cats and dogs.

22:08 And yet, this is an amount of empathy that not all animals receive.

22:13 This is the amount of cows that we eat.

22:18 This, the number of pigs.

22:24 And this is the number of chicken that get killed.

22:31 This is not per year.

22:36 This is per day.

22:40 A few years ago, I decided to try and stop eating meat.

22:45 For the animals and for the planet.

22:48 Nowadays, more than 99% of my meals are vegetarian.

22:52 But I sometimes can't resist the temptation

22:54 of a juicy hamburger after a night out.

22:57 I know how easy it is to eat meat without thinking about it.

23:01 I did it almost my whole life.

23:03 I love meat.

23:04 And it's such a big part of our cultures.

23:06 It's hard to get away from.

23:08 I'm not saying you should also change your diet.

23:12 But over the last years, cutting out meat for me has become easier.

23:16 Replacements like the Beyond Burger are almost as juicy as the real thing.

23:21 I still dream about bacon sometimes.

23:23 But whenever I eat meat now, it's okay.

23:26 It's just never as amazing as I'd imagined.

23:28 Still, I am looking forward to a future

23:31 where it is possible to have cultured meat.

23:35 To eat real meat without hurting animals.

23:38 And who knows, this might someday help to extend the feelings

23:42 we have for whales to other beings with a beating heart.

23:46 [crickets chirping] (door opens)