Whale hunting with gun and camera / A naturalist's account of the modern shore-whaling industry, of whales and their habits, and of hunting experiences in various parts of the world

by Roy Chapman Andrews

Ten minutes dragged by; then, without a sound of warning, the floor of the ocean seemed to rise and a mountainous black body, dripping with foam, heaved upward almost over our heads. It paused an instant, then fell sideways to be swallowed up in a vortex of green water. With the camera ready in my hands I stared at the thing. It might have been an eruption of a submarine volcano or a waterspout; I would as soon have thought of photographing either. Even the nerves of Sorenson, the harpooner, were shaken and he clung weakly to the gun without a move to use it.

The whale had dropped back scarcely twenty feet away; if it had fallen in the other direction the vessel would have been crushed like an eggshell beneath its forty tons of weight. Never since then have I known of a whale breaching so close to a ship, although they have frequently come out within a hundred and fifty feet.

A few days later we had sighted a lone bull humpback early in the afternoon and for two hours had been doing our utmost to get a shot. The whale seemed to know exactly how far the gun was effective and would invariably rise just out of range. Once he sounded forty fathoms ahead and, as I stood waiting near the gun platform with the camera ready, suddenly the water parted directly in front of us and with a rush which sent its huge body five feet clear of the surface the whale shot into the air, fins wide spread, and fell back on its side amid a cloud of spray.

I was watching for the animal on the starboard bow but managed to swing about with the camera and press the button just before he disappeared. Although the photograph was hardly successful, nevertheless it is interesting as being the only one yet taken of a breaching humpback; it shows the whale breast forward falling upon its right side.

Humpbacks probably breach in play and sometimes an entire school will throw their forty-five-foot bodies into the air, each one apparently trying to outdo the others. For some reason the humpbacks of Alaska and the Pacific coast seem to breach much more frequently than do those in Japan waters.

This species is the most playful of all the large whales—one of the reasons why to me they are the most interesting. Breaching is probably their most spectacular performance but what the whalers call “lobtailing” is almost as remarkable. The animal assumes an inverted position, literally standing upon its head, and with the entire posterior part of the body out of the water begins to wave the gigantic flukes back and forth. The motion is slow and measured at first, the flukes not touching the water on either side. Faster and faster they move until the water is lashed into foam and clouds of spray are sent high into the air; then the motion ceases and the animal sinks out of sight. There is considerable variety to the performance, the whale sometimes pounding the water right and left for a few seconds and then going down.

A humpback whale “lobtailing.” The animal assumes an inverted position and, with the entire posterior part of the body out of the water, begins to wave the gigantic flukes back and forth, lashing the water into foam.

Many of the gunners believe that lobtailing is indulged in to free the whale’s flukes from the barnacles which fasten in clusters to the tips and along the edges. I do not believe that this supposition can be correct for the barnacles are embedded too firmly in the blubber to be dislodged by such beating. That the animals come into shallow water and rub against rocks to rid themselves of parasites, as whalemen report, seems much more probable.

The playful disposition of these whales is manifested in other ways. Very frequently when a ship is hunting a single humpback the animal will play tag with the vessel. It will come up first on one side and then on the other; “double” under water and rise almost at the stern; thrust its head into the air or plunge along the surface with half the body exposed but always just out of range of the harpoon-gun. Sometimes this will last for two or three hours or until the whale is killed; at others the animal will seem to tire of the game and with a farewell flirt of its tail dive and swim away.