Farming the golden flense3/13/2024 ![]() During the open-boat whaling era in Japan in the late 16th to early 20th century, whales were winched ashore by large capstans. Both parties only cut off the blubber and the head, leaving the rest of the carcass to polar bears and sea birds. This latter method proved much less time-consuming and more effective. The Dutch eschewed this system, bringing the whales into the shallows at high-tide and flensing them at low-tide. These were tied together and rowed ashore, where they were cut into smaller pieces to be boiled into oil in large copper kettles ( trypots). The English brought the whale to the stern of the ship, where men in a boat cut strips of blubber from the whale's back. Where the whale was flensed differed between the English and Dutch. In Spitsbergen, in the first half of the 17th century, the processing of whales was primarily done ashore. A whale (left foreground) is being flensed. Facsimile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Thevet, in folio: Paris, 1574 " Smeerenburg". Open-boat Shore and bay whaling Whale-Fishing. In aboriginal whaling the blubber is rarely rendered into oil, although it may be eaten as muktuk.Įnglish whalemen referred to the process as flensing, while American whalemen called it cutting-in or flinching. The whaling that still continues in the 21st century is both industrial and aboriginal. It was an important part of the history of whaling. ![]() Processing the blubber (the subcutaneous fat) into whale oil was the key step that transformed a whale carcass into a stable, transportable commodity. Flensing at Whalers Bay, Deception Islandįlensing is the removing of the blubber or outer integument of whales, separating it from the animal's meat.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |