Jimmy baker, age 7, of Richmond, Va., for his question:
Are whales useful today?
The whale is a more valuable animal than ever he was in the past. Not so long ago, the oil and meat from just one of these ocean going giants were sold for some $28,000. A modern whaling ship comes back with a harvest of all kinds of useful products. Ambergris, which is one of the most valuable substances in the world, is made by whales.
We d0 not know when mankind first learned t0 capture the giant whale and make use of his body. But the Norse people were expert whalers more than a thousand years ago. Later, in the middle ages, French and Spanish ships returned to port with countless tons of whalebone and whale oil. Every year, thousands of whales were captured in the arctic ocean.
The whale is a warm blooded animal, and since he often travels to polar seas, he needs a way to keep out the cold.. His whole body is sheathed in layers and layers of fatty tissue called blubber. When it is me1ted down, some of the blubber oozes out as whale oil. And whale oil is still a very, very useful product.
There are various kinds of whale oil, and all of them are rich in food value. Some is fine enough to be used for oiling delicate machinery. Some is made into margarine. Whale oil is also used to make soaps, salves and skin creams. And some is used to make the sticky, sweet substance called glycerin.
A small amount of the harvest of whale glycerin is used in skin creams. But most of it is used to make ammunition. This means that the whale is useful to us in warfare. The finest whale oil is called spermaceti or sperm oil. It comes from a whitish fluid in the head of the toothy sperm whale, and the sperm whale may have a head 10 feet long.
The sperm whale also yields ambergris, but ships do not have to put to sea for this valuable substance. Ambergris is a soft, grayish substance used to make fine perfumes. It washes up on the beaches and may be worth more than $2000 a pound.
Whale meat is now sold in many lands. It is the red muscle of the huge animal, and it tastes somewhat like sirloin steak.
In the past, whalebone or baleen was us ed to stiffen fans and dresses, and whale oil was used in oil burning lamps. Now days, we use strips of pliable plastic in place of baleen, and our lights are powered by gas or electricity. But the mighty whale is still one of the most useful animals in the whole world.
An early new England whaler would put to sea for three years and capture 40 to 100 whales. A modern whaling ship is fitted up with machinery to take the useful products fn more than 70 whales a day. Far more whales are being captured, arid the world's whale population becomes less every year. Each giant blue whale may yield 100 barrels of rich oil, which is 5000 gallons, and perhaps 50 tons of red meat.