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Whaling started about 900 A.D. The Native Americans hunted right whales from the Atlantic coast before the 1760's. In the 1760's English colonist arrived to hunt whales. At first Americans only hunted the right whale, because it had baleen. Baleen was used for many different purposes.
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American Indians often used orca whales as symbols on their totem poles and canoes. Some Indians believed that people who drowned in an ocean turned into a killer whale. Others believed that killer whales could turn themselves into wolves and come on shore. Still others believed that orcas were their strongest gods.
In about 1815 Americans hunted sperm whales more than any other whale. A sperm whale named Moby Dick is very well know because of the novel written in 1815 by Herman Melvin.
The most whaling happened in the 1830's and ended about 400 years later. During that time a lot of whales almost went extinct. Today whaling in America is against the law. But the International Whaling Commision (I.W.C.) still lets Alaskan Eskimos hunt them for food and subsistence use.
Japan and Norway say they hunt whales for scientific reasearch, but whale meat is sold in stores and restaurants in those same countries. In all the oceans of the United States marine mammals are protected by the Marine Mammal Act of 1972. This stops people from coming up to them in boats or planes or swimming with them. Green Peace, C.I.T.E.S. & Worldwide Fund For Nature helps ban whaling. The issues surrounding whaling have gotten attention from all over the world.
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