Right Whale Hunting: A Historical Review

Whales suffered greatly at the hands of the Basques, i.e. the inhabitants of a small region straddling France and Spain. As far back as the 11th century, the Basques had already been lucratively hunting grey whales with harpoons, followed by right whales, which they called Biscay whales or sardak baleac, i.e. “herding whales,” in the Bay of Biscay in the Atlantic. However, they depleted the stocks in this region in the 16th century.

The presence of the Basques in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is attested very early, i.e. between 1480 and 1530, during which period they were engaged in cod fishing. Their attention quickly turned to the many pods of whales that frequented the region. For entire seasons, the Basques settled in the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Newfoundland and it is estimated that around twenty to thirty “Biscayan” whaling ships and 2,000 sailors were present every summer! They were mainly interested in bowhead and right whales in the Strait of Belle Isle and even ventured into the St. Lawrence Estuary, including Les Escoumins, Île aux Basques and as far upstream as Île Chafaud aux Basques! In his article “L’exploitation des cétacés dans l’estuaire du Saint-Laurent: survol historique,” anthropologist Alain Bernard believes that it is highly likely that it was to pursue “one or both of these species that they carried out their fishing activities opposite Tadoussac circa 1580.” The few blubber ovens still present on Île aux Basques and Île Chafaud aux Basques bear witness to the presence of whalers and their quest for large whales.

Historical accounts attest to the abundance of whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In fact, they were so numerous that they even represented a navigational hazard. In his book, The Sea of ​​Slaughter, Farley Mowat relates a number of testimonies of the time: “[T]he worst risk to navigation in the New Founde Land was not fog, ice, or uncharted rocks – it was whales of such size and in such numbers that collision with them was an ever-present danger.” In the 1600s, sailors estimated that whales were so numerous in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that they “became very tiresome to us and hindered our rest by their continuous movement and the noise of their spoutings.” In 1705, Sieur Courtemanche made a surprising observation: “On the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, whales were in such abundance that they came so close to land they could be harpooned from the rocks.”

Right whales were not the only victims of whaling: a significant portion of the biodiversity in the St. Lawrence was also lost. According to Farley Mowat, testimonies from the time attest that so many whales were being killed in the St. Lawrence that the local polar bear population skyrocketed, as these animals would routinely feed on the carcass remains of harvested whales. Polar bears were hunted until they were extirpated from Anticosti Island and the northern gulf in the 17th century, and later from the entire Labrador coast.

Huge colonies of walrus (in French) were once found scattered across the gulf and into the estuary. In less than two centuries, the St. Lawrence walrus populations of the St. Lawrence were decimated and completely wiped out of the region by the end of the 1700s. The great auk (Pinguinus impennis) (in French) was hunted so heavily that the species became extinct in 1844. Additionally, when he dropped anchor in a cove off Île aux Coudres in 1535, Jacques Cartier noted (web page in French) “an incalculable number of large [sea] turtles.”

Whaling has had such a heavy impact on cetacean populations that it is possible that the collapse of certain populations has altered their migration routes. Does their reappearance mark the beginning of a return to their roots? We invite you to read more in the second part of this article, which discusses the return of right whales to their historical range.