A Story of Whales, Oil and Humans

Text by Florian Tuercke

During the Industrial Revolution, a major energy transition took place. In 1855, Abraham P. Gesner (1797-1864) patented a process for extracting petroleum, ushering in the era of mineral oil. Petroleum quickly proved to be a cheap alternative to oils of animal origin – especially the oil obtained from whale blubber – which had previously illuminated factories and lubricated machines. In the years that followed, this shift saved the lives of tens of thousands of whales… but not for long.

In pre-industrial times, whales were both a resource and mythic creatures. In Inuit mythology, the severed fingers of the sea goddess Sedna, who watches over the creatures of the deep, manifest as seals, walruses, and whales. Much of the sailors’ lore about sea monsters and sirens likely grew from encounters with large marine mammals and the strange sounds they make.

Whales have been hunted by humans since ancient times – by Indigenous cultures as well as by those who considered themselves “civilized.” Among the latter, demand for whale products rose steadily, peaking during early industrialization and costing the lives of up to 10,000 whales each year. Although alternatives for lamp oil existed, such as plant-based oils, the unique properties of whale oil – its bright flame and low smoke – kept it in high demand, especially for illuminating museums, galleries, and palaces.

An initially fortunate turn for whales came with the discovery and exploitation of mineral oil as an increasingly inexpensive substitute for whale fat. In the years that followed, petroleum-based products largely replaced those derived from whales, and demand for whale products dropped close to zero. Economic forces played a major role: decades of intensive hunting had depleted whale populations and driven prices upward.

Yet the momentum that industrialization gained from mineral energy soon brought whales back into danger. Geopolitical rivalries between great powers led to global wars, and whales became strategically significant once again. After World War I, an English general reportedly declared that the war could not have been won without whales, since whale oil was essential for producing nitroglycerin – and thus dynamite. During World War II, it was margarine for which tens of thousands of whales had to die.

Despite rapid advances in the petrochemical industry and a flood of new synthetic materials, certain substances derived from whale oil remained irreplaceable for decades. Oil from sperm whale heads, for example, possessed exceptional physical properties and continued to be used in specialized products. One prominent example was gun oil.

The connection between whales and warfare resurfaced in unexpected ways in the second half of the twentieth century. During the Cold War, enormous efforts were devoted to acoustically monitoring the oceans in order to detect enemy submarines. Systems such as the U.S. Navy’s SOSUS network listened constantly to the deep. Alongside human-made underwater noise, these acoustic fishermen of the superpowers also captured a remarkable variety of animal sounds. And so, the first ever recordings of whale song were made by military facilities.

These recordings fascinated American biologists Katy (b. 1937) and Roger Payne (1935-2023). Inspired by them, the researchers began using hydrophones to record whale songs themselves. In 1970 they released the now-famous record Songs of the Humpback Whale, which helped spark widespread public fascination with these animals and fuelled the growing movement calling for a global ban on whaling.

Today there is no longer any economic reasons for hunting whales, and thanks to international agreements, commercial whaling is no longer the primary threat to large marine mammals. Instead, whales are endangered by our continuing dependence on fossil energy. Because sound travels vast distances underwater, most whale species rely heavily on acoustic signals to communicate and to locate food or mates. The songs of humpback whales are the best-known example, but all whale species communicate with sound.

These acoustic signals are increasingly drowned in a sea of human-made noise: ship engines and propellers, naval sonar, and seismic surveys. The low-frequency noise produced by large ships falls precisely within the range used by many whale species to communicate. Seismic surveys searching for undersea oil and gas deposits are carried out with extremely loud sound pulses that can travel for hundreds of kilometres. These blasts not only drive whales away from feeding and breeding grounds; they can also permanently damage their sensitive hearing – a particularly dangerous outcome for species that depend on echolocation to hunt.

Forty years after the global ban on hunting large whales took effect, some whale populations are recovering, but many are not. DNA analyses suggest that before commercial whaling there may have been as many as 1.5 million humpback whales in the world’s oceans. Today their population is estimated at around 135,000. Blue whales remain even rarer: optimistic estimates suggest roughly 25,000 individuals worldwide – less than ten percent of their pre-industrial population.

Beyond noise pollution, whales also face the destruction of their habitats and the increasing contamination of the oceans with microplastics and persistent chemical pollutants such as PCBs. Ultimately, many of these pressures are consequences of the global population boom fuelled by fossil energy and sustained by the petrochemical industry and its impact on the pharmaceutical sector.

Ironically, without the discovery and exploitation of petroleum, humans might have exterminated large whales more than 150 years ago. Yet our new dependence on “black gold” has hardly spared them. Even after the international moratorium on commercial whaling, whales remain endangered by the many ways in which modern society relies on oil: as fuel for cargo ships and fishing vessels, in the search for new offshore oil and gas deposits, and through our insatiable hunger for cheap, colourful plastic products that we ship across the world’s oceans, where they eventually end up as microplastics.

But what about the whales? Can they hear the good news that we want to try not to heat their waters any further?  Or do they just keep singing amid all the noise we make over oil?

And what about us? Are we impressed when neuroscience suggests that orcas may be more intelligent than humans? We boycott dolphinariums, believe in renewable energy, and listen to the New Age–romanticized voices of the “gentle giants” while driving our SUVs to organic supermarkets. We fly to Tenerife for whale watching, remember Flipper and Free Willy, and donate to Greenpeace at Christmas.

Or perhaps we do not care at all.

Hey Dory, do you speak Whale?

 

Sources: Jupiter Research Foundation, Greenpeace, Environment & Society Portal, WWF, David Rothenberg, Ocean Alliance, Montana State University, The Whalesong Project, Endangered Species Coalition, oceana.org, afpm.org, Finding Nemo

Audio sources: Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database; Songs of the Humpback Whale (Dr. Roger Payne, 1970)