Why People Kill Whales In The 1800s

452 Words2 Pages

So why do people used to kill whales in the 1800s? Well it's was because of one very important item which is oil. Whales had 25 tons of oil and soon everything about the whale was used to the flesh to the bones. During the 1850s, a certain man literary saved the whales. His name was Abraham Gesner who was a canadian physician and geologist. He made a type of oil called kerosene which was better than whale oil. Therefor, “Gesner's kerosene was cheap, easy to produce, could be burned in existing lamps, and did not produce an offensive odor as did most whale oil. It could be stored indefinitely, unlike whale oil, which would eventually spoil. The American petroleum boom began in the 1850s. By the end of the decade there were thirty …show more content…

47 out of 50 states of the United States hunt for whales. Those states are Japan, Norway and Iceland. They still hunt since whales give them profit. As a result, Japan, Norway, and Iceland have often refused the idea of ending whaling even though they have many different resources that could still provide them. “It's one way that counties can earn profit." By killing whales they can earn millions of dollars in months. But, there are other ways of making profit such as selling oil than whale meat/oil. We are in the present. There are many ways to replace bad resources with good ones in the matter of months/years. Whale meat is even similar to moose meat and reindeer meat so some science can make the moose and reindeer meat taste like whale meat. Until now, “The products made from various bits of whale include: lamp oil (from sperm oil), margarine and cooking oil (from whale oil), candles, soaps, cosmetics and perfumes (from sperm oil), corsets and umbrellas (from whalebone), whale-meat for human consumption, animal feed (from meat meal), fertiliser (from bone meal), string for tennis racquets (from tendons)”(Module 9.5.1 Replacing Natural Products) In the past, whales were used for lamp oil, cooking oil, candles, soaps, umbrellas, meat, animals feed, fertilizers and strings for tennis