OPEN-BOAT WHALING ON THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR GROUND AND ADJACENT WATERS

MARINE MAMMAL SCIENCE, 23(2): 322–342 (April 2007)C© 2007 by the Society for Marine MammalogyDOI: 10.1111/j.1748-7692.2007.00111.x

OPEN-BOAT WHALING ON THE STRAITS OFGIBRALTAR GROUND AND ADJACENT WATERS

ALEX AGUILAR

ASSUMPCIO BORRELL

Department of Animal Biology,University of Barcelona,08071 Barcelona, Spain

E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Logbooks (n = 317) from whaling expeditions made in the North Atlantic dur-ing the 19th century were examined to investigate activity in the Gibraltar Straitsgrounds. At least forty expeditions of whaling vessels from European and Americanports visited the area. In all cases the main target was the sperm whale, but pilotwhales, dolphins, sea turtles, and even a blue whale were also taken. Whaling effortconcentrated on the Atlantic side of the Straits; only two expeditions ventured intothe Mediterranean Sea, obtaining negligible catches. The whaling season extendedduring spring and summer and peaked in June–July. This seasonality appeared notto be governed by changes in whale density but by the trade winds necessary tosail southward or westward to cross the Atlantic. Searching effort continued whiletrying out, but the rate of sighting cetaceans was about half that of searching peri-ods. However, the rate of sighting or capturing a sperm whale remained unchangedduring processing, probably because the gregarious habits of the species producedclumping of catches. For every whale secured, 1.31 whales were struck. After cor-recting for struck but lost whales and for “gammed” vessels, the minimum numberof removals of sperm whales during 1862–1889 is estimated at 237.

Key words: whaling, whaling history, open-boat whaling, sperm whale, Physetermacrocephalus, Straits of Gibraltar, Mediterranean Sea, whale fishery, exploitation.

Concern about increasing human pressure on sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)populations on both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar has risen in recent years. Forover two centuries, the area was the scene of whaling operations. In the 19th century,sperm whales were hunted by open-boat pelagic whalers (Townsend 1935), and in thefirst half of the 20th century by steam whalers from two land stations and a numberof floating factories (Sanpera and Aguilar 1992). The effects of the various phasesof exploitation on the population are unclear, but it is likely that catch levels werehigh enough to reduce the population. Whitehead (2002) estimated that open-boatwhaling reduced the worldwide sperm whale population to about 71% of its originallevel, and modern operations would have decreased it to 32%.

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In recent years, sperm whales in the western Mediterranean have been the subjectof incidental catches by the high-seas swordfish driftnet fishery, particularly duringthe late 1980s and 1990s (Notarbartolo di Sciara 1990, International Whaling Com-mission 1994). Despite international and national regulation, illegal fishing with thisgear continues in that sea, purportedly representing a continued threat for the species(ACCOBAMS 2003, Tudela et al. 2003). Also, the sperm whale is a top predator andis thus particularly susceptible to exposure to persistent chemical contaminants, suchas organochlorines and heavy metals. These compounds are abundant in the westernMediterranean (Aguilar et al. 2002), thus adding another source of concern. Further,the Straits of Gibraltar register one of the most intense maritime traffic levels world-wide, and disturbance caused by this traffic and the associated risk of collision havebeen also been identified as a threat (Pesante et al. 2002, de Stephanis et al. 2003).A particular case of invasive boat traffic is that of whale watching, an activity thathas grown rapidly in the area (Urquiola and de Stephanis 2000) and that often se-lectively focuses on sperm whales. To date, whale watching is not regulated and itcontributes to the potential impacts of vessel-generated noise, collisions, and habitatencroachment.

Recent research indicates that Mediterranean sperm whales can be differentiatedfrom their North Atlantic counterparts by their lack of haplotypic diversity (onlyone mtDNA haplotype has been reported for Mediterranean sperm whales), DNAmicrosatellite profiles (Druout et al. 2004, Engelhaupt 2004), and pattern of clicksused in communication (Druout and Gannier 1999, Pavan et al. 2000). These fea-tures indicate isolation and heighten concern about the long-term stability of thepopulations, particularly of that inhabiting Mediterranean waters (e.g., Notarbartolodi Sciara et al. 2004).

Assessment of current population trajectories requires the evaluation of past effectson the species in the area, especially exploitation. The whaling operations in the 20thcentury were reviewed by Sanpera and Aguilar (1992), who compiled informationon fishing effort and magnitude and chronology of catches. In contrast, operationsand catches in the 19th century have not been well documented. The main secondarysources on open-boat pelagic whaling are ambiguous about the region around theStraits of Gibraltar. Many authors, for example, Wilkes (1845), Maury (1852), Jenkins(1921), Hohman (1928), Ashley (1942), and Tower (1907), do not mention whalingactivity in the region. Conversely, Wood (1831–1862) registered visits to the areain several entries of his abstracts, Clark (1884–1887) mentioned sperm whales as“quite numerous along the southern coast of Portugal and Spain from Cape SaintVincent to the Straits of Gibraltar” and identified the western basin of the Straitsas a sperm whaling ground (plate 183), and Townsend (1931, 1935), while notspecifically mentioning the area in his description of the North Atlantic grounds,depicted a distinct clump of catches there in his April–September chart (plate I).

In this study we have surveyed original sources from whaling expeditions in theNorth Atlantic and extracted data about cruising tracks, searching effort, and locationand number of sightings and catches in the areas around the Straits of Gibraltar(referred to hereafter as the Straits) with the aim of establishing the extent and modeof operation of the whale fishery in that particular region.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

On the basis of preliminary data and the rough fishing zones described in Clark’s(1884–1887) and Townsend’s (1935) charts, the study was circumscribed to the area

324 MARINE MAMMAL SCIENCE, VOL. 23, NO. 2, 2007

falling between 32◦ and 44◦N and between 15◦W and 20◦E. Whaling expeditionsliable to include data of interest, that is, those mostly bound for the North Atlantic,were identified through a variety of means, but mainly from Dennis Wood’s ab-stracts (1831–1873), Starbuck (1878), Hegarty (1959), Savours and Brown (1977),Sherman et al. (1986), the Whalemen’s Shipping List and Merchants’ Transcript, thegeographic indices of the “Abstracts of Whaling Logs and Journals” of the OldDartmouth Historical Society logbook collection compiled by J. S. Cumpston (NewBedford Whaling Museum), the card files and abstracts of the Kendall logbook col-lection (New Bedford Whaling Museum), the card files of the New Bedford PublicLibrary, the library guide of the Nicholson Whaling Collection (Providence PublicLibrary), and the online databases of the Scott Polar Research Institute (Universityof Cambridge), the UK National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, and the Lon-don Royal Geographical Society. The logbooks were not selected at random butchosen from those that appeared promising based on the above-referred files andabstracts. Further identification of “promising” vessels was made during logbookdata extraction by compiling the names of the vessels spoken to, or “gammed” with,and the date when this occurred. Gamming was a means of communicating newsof the expedition to other vessels likely to return home earlier and was thus of vi-tal interest (Sherman 1965). It is reasonable to assume that most whaling vesselsin the area were, on some occasion, in contact with other ships. Logbooks, jour-nals, or other reference material relative to the whaling expeditions thus identifiedwere searched either in the above sources or through Sherman et al. (1986) andLund (2001).

Logbook examinations were performed in the New Bedford (Massachusetts) Whal-ing Museum, the New Bedford (Massachusetts) Free Public Library, the Providence(Rhode Island) Public Library, the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich, UK),and the Royal Geographical Society (London, UK). Data extraction followed gen-eral methods described by Shuster (1987) and Mitchell (1983). From each logbookwe collected name of vessel and dates of operation in the Straits grounds and, on adaily basis, the following variables: daily activity (searching, chasing, boiling, stow-ing down, etc.), species and number of cetaceans sighted and taken (including thosestruck but lost), number of barrels obtained, vessels spoken to or raised, and geo-graphical position of the vessel. When the latter was not recorded daily, gaps werefilled by interpolation between the preceding and following positions, or calculatedfrom land-mark references and distances, when available.

Not all whales struck were secured. A fraction of those struck were lost eitherthrough dying and sinking, or from escaping wounded after they had been harpoonedor lanced (Best 1983). Thus, the true number removed from the population was higherthan the reported number of whales tried out. The proportion of mortally woundedwhales that escaped probably depended on a number of operational factors, such as thetechnology used (including the use of bomb lances), skill of whalers, sea conditions,and segment of the population exploited, among others, and can only be estimated.Some logbook keepers recorded the number of whales that were struck but lost and,following Bannister et al. (1983), a loss rate factor (LR) was calculated as:

LR = whales secured + whales killed but not secured/whales secured.

If it is assumed that all struck and lost whales eventually died, multiplying recordedcatches by LR would result in the maximum number of kills; the minimum numberwould be that of whales effectively secured.


In the absence of a comprehensive collection of logbooks from the boats thatoperated in the area, an estimate of the minimum size of the fleet, and thus of itssperm whale removals, can be obtained through the “spoken-to” events recorded in theavailable logbooks. To do so, Hope and Whitehead (1991) developed a method basedon the total number of “spoken-to” events recorded in the logbooks of pairs of shipsboth of whose logbooks were read. However, the number of extant logbooks from theGibraltar Straits grounds is small, and the latter requirement was only fulfilled by fourlogbooks pairs (President II/Benjamin Franklin for 1863–1864, President II/Annawan IIfor 1869, President II/Kathleen for 1880, and Bertha/Canton for 1883). These logbookscovered a limited overlapping period, and consistency of their annotations was highlyvariable among vessels (e.g., the President II recorded in 1864 the presence of theBenjamin Franklin in 25 occasions, but the reverse was only true in 5 occasions).Therefore, the current logbook sample was considered insufficiently representativeto apply the Hope and Whitehead (1991) method, and the total number of spermwhales removed by the fishery (T) was estimated through the following equation,derived from that proposed by Bannister et al. (1983):

T = [N+(V s × N/V i )] LR,

where N is the number of whales tried out in the area by expeditions for whichlogbooks were examined; Vs is the number of vessels spoken to or raised in the grounds,excluding duplicates; and Vi is the number of expeditions whose logbooks wereexamined and produced catch N. We assume that the expeditions whose logbookswere consulted had the same whaling performance as those whose logbooks were notfound.

After a successful chase, the sperm whale was taken alongside the vessel and blubberwas cut and boiled to extract oil, which afterward was introduced into barrels thatwere stowed in the hold. This process lasted several days depending on size andnumber of whales caught. Whenever information was available, the duration of theprocess was estimated from the entry in the logbook indicating lowering of boatsto the entry indicating that stowing had finished. During at least the first partof the operation, the rate of sighting and hunting another whale could have beenaltered because the vessel remained stationary. Moreover, searching effort was likelyto decrease while the crew was involved in the extraction of blubber or oil. Variationin whaling effort among operation modes (searching or processing) was investigatedthrough the calculation of the rate of sighting or capturing a sperm whale per unit ofeffort (SPUE or CPUE, respectively), or of sighting a cetacean of any species (SPUE),as:

SPUE or CPUE = number of sightings or catches × 100/number of days in mode.

Similarly, seasonal variation in whale availability was studied by calculating asightings rate per unit of effort for each 10-d period as:

SPUE = number of sightings × 100/whaling days in searching mode.

Days when the ship was anchored were not counted as whaling days. No correctionwas made for weather conditions because masters showed little consistency in theirrecordings and the data in the logbooks were usually imprecise. However, given that


whalers worked in the Straits in the summer, when sea conditions are mostly good,it is reasonable to assume that most days spent at sea were whaling days.

Data were analyzed geographically using GIS Arc-view software and statisticallyusing SPSS software.

RESULTS

In total, 317 logbooks from whaling expeditions to the North Atlantic weresurveyed. Of these, 287 were American, mostly from New England, 24 British,5 German, and 2 Portuguese (Azorean). These numbers account for a small part ofthe ca. 5,000 logbooks available in public collections and archives (Sherman et al.1986, Lund 2001), and a much smaller fraction of the total number of open-boatpelagic whaling expeditions known to have occurred from the 18th to the early 20thcenturies—Lund (2001) lists 14,864 only from American ports. While recognizingthe limitations of the present survey, examination of all potential logbooks withinformation of interest would be an unfeasible task. It is thus assumed that the sampleanalyzed is representative of the mode of operation of the whaling expeditions thatoccurred in the region. However, there is no way to estimate what proportion of theactual number of expeditions occurring in the region these logbooks represent. Thehigher the number of unidentified voyages, the larger will be the underestimation ofthe number of sperm whales caught.

The period covered by the logbooks examined ranges from 1769 to 1921, Europeanexpeditions concentrating in 1820–1865 and American in 1830–1910 (Fig. 1). Inboth cases, the periods in which the grounds of the Straits were visited match thecentral periods for which more logbooks are available. For the European fleet thiscorresponded to 1820–1848 and for the American to 1862–1889. Thirty-three ex-peditions (17 American, 15 British, and 1 German) included permanence (≥3 d) inthe area and were thus analyzed in detail (Appendix 1). European vessels were riggedas ships (17), barks (2), or brigs (1), and American vessels were in all cases riggedas barks (7) except for one schooner. From the American vessels whose tonnage wasknown (n = 7), tonnage ranged 108–239 tonnes, with a mean of 175; this figure isin the lower range of the American whaling fleet for the same period (Best 1983,Davis et al. 1997). In addition to these vessels, examination of the American logbooksrevealed, either by identified sighting or by speaking to or “gamming,” the existenceof nine other expeditions to these grounds whose logbooks appear not to have sur-vived (Sherman 1986, Lund 2001). Of these, the vessels of at least seven expeditionsare identified in Lund (2001) as New England whalers (Appendix 2). Sightings ofmost of these seven whaling vessels were repeatedly reported along periods of severalweeks, during which they were observed chasing or processing (“boiling”) whales,indicating they were engaged in successful whaling. Thus, we can crudely estimatethat the true whaling effort during the period for which information is available islikely to be 40% (7/17) higher than that reported by the logbooks examined.

The pattern of activity of the American and European fleets differed and were thustreated separately. British and German vessels were invariably bound for southerndestinations, usually in the Pacific or the Indian Oceans; they crossed the area rapidly(Fig. 2) and their logbooks contained only sporadic sightings and catches of spermwhales. British vessels tended to follow a southward track that ran parallel and rel-atively close to the Iberian Peninsula, while German and Portuguese vessels cruisedfarther offshore and in most cases far away from the Straits. In contrast, American


Figure 1. Frequency distribution of the number of logbooks studied that covered expe-ditions to the North Atlantic (gray line) and of logbooks studied that included permanence(≥3 d) in the grounds of the Straits of Gibraltar (black line).

vessels headed specifically to the grounds of the Straits and remained there for sub-stantial periods (Fig. 3). Mean stay for American vessels was 74.9 d (SD ± 27.8) andfor those European was 5.1 d (SD ± 1.9) (Appendix 3). The total number of days ofactivity recorded for the European and American vessels in the grounds was 81 and1,273 respectively.

The main target of the fishery was the sperm whale, for which the logbooks register121 sightings and 128 catches (Appendix 3). Most sightings were of schools, althoughthe precise school size was never recorded; at the most, logbooks distinguished be-tween “one whale” and “whales” or “school of whales.” Given the concentration ofthe fishery in a restricted area and the evident slow displacement of the vessels oncein the grounds, it is probable that sightings included repeat encounters of the sameindividuals. Sperm whales were sighted and caught off the northwestern coast ofMorocco to the southwestern coast of Spain, particularly over the slope (Fig. 4a).

Sightings of other species were also often recorded. However, all European ves-sels and some American only registered those of sperm whales; for example, thebark Annawan II did not record any small cetacean sighting except those of pilot


Figure 2. Tracks followed by European whaling expeditions while crossing the groundsof the Straits or neighboring waters.

whales and only when this species was caught. Overall, sighting records included“finback” whales (n = 102), referring most likely to fin whales although also refer-ring occasionally to sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis) or Bryde’s (Balaenoptera edeni);“sulphurbottom” or blue whales, Balaenoptera musculus (n = 6); humpback whales,Megaptera novaeangliae (n = 3); “blackfish” or pilot whales (n = 49); killer whales, Orci-nus orca (n = 6); “grampus” (n = 17), most likely Risso’s dolphin, Grampus griseus, butmay also refer to other blunt-headed delphinids such as false killer whales, Pseudorcacrassidens, “cowfish” or bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus (n = 17); and “dolphins”(n = 90), which, given the cetacean fauna in the region (Bayed and Beaubrun 1987),were probably short-beaked common dolphins, Delphinus delphis, or striped dolphins,Stenella coeruleoalba. Figure 4b shows the locations where sightings of baleen whaleswere made. In addition to the usual sperm whale catch, the logbooks registered rou-tine takes of pilot whales and dolphins and, exceptionally, the catch of one blue whaleby the bark Benjamin Franklin in 1864.

The duration and timing of the catch season, established as the number of daysspent in the grounds and broken into monthly periods in the case of the Europeanexpeditions and into 10-d periods in the case of American expeditions, are shownin Figure 5 and 6, respectively. European vessels sailed across the region throughoutthe year, and the peak observed in June was mostly due to the larger contributionof a single vessel, the Active, which was the only one that spent several days chasingwhales in the area. Conversely, the American fleet limited their visits to the area fromApril to October, with a peak between 10 June and 10 August.

The logbook of the expedition made by the bark Benjamin Franklin from 1863 to1865 indicated, from a total of sixteen strikes, three instances of striking a sperm whale


Figure 3. Tracks followed by American whaling expeditions while conducting whalingin the grounds of the Straits or neighboring waters.

and subsequently losing it. That of the bark Annawan II in 1868 recorded two struckand lost out of fourteen strikes. That of the bark Kathleen in 1880, complementedwith the diary of the same voyage written by Ferguson (1936), recorded seven struckand lost whales out of twenty-one strikes. The overall LR factor for these three vesselscan be calculated as 1.31 per whale secured. However, it is noteworthy that, inthe latter case, the diary registers more struck but lost cases than the logbook, sologbooks may not have been comprehensive in registering such events. The absenceof this information in the other logbooks may indicate that losses did not occuror, most likely, that these events were not considered of enough relevance to berecorded. Indeed, there were many notations of the type “lowered without success,”which may either describe whale chasing with no harpooning, or harpooning withsubsequent loss. Unfortunately, none of the logbook keepers specified details suchas “spouting blood” or “lost after death by sinking,” which could have been usedto refine the relationship between the LR factor and true mortality (Bannister et al.1983, Best 1983). Therefore, LR should be considered only a rough estimate of theminimum true mortality rate and any calculation of removals derived from it is likelyto underestimate true catch numbers.

The time invested in processing the catch was specified for fifty-two operationsinvolving the take of ninety-six sperm whales. It ranged from 4.15 to 8 d and wasclearly influenced by the number of whales caught (1–5), although the increase isfar from proportional (Table 1). The effect of processing on hunting efficiency wasanalyzed from a sample of 1,003 d in searching mode (813 with information on speciesother than sperm whales) and 278 d in processing mode (244 with information onspecies other than sperm whales). Table 2 depicts for each mode the rate of sighting


Figure 4. Distribution of sightings and catches of sperm whales (a) and baleen whales (b)by American whalers.

or capturing a SPUE, or of sighting a cetacean of any species per unit of effort.Differences were highly significant (chi-squared test, P < 0.01) among modes inthe sighting of cetaceans, though not in the catches or sightings of sperm whales.To avoid interference of operation activities and potential clumping of catches, themonthly variation in sperm whale abundance was studied by computing data onlywhen the vessels were in searching mode. The result, broken in 10-d periods, is shownin Figure 7. SPUE showed no significant trend throughout the season.


Figure 5. Annual distribution of whaling effort of European expeditions on the GibraltarStraits ground. Effort is expressed as the number of days on the ground per month.

DISCUSSION

Although the logbooks examined covered the period 1769–1921, most Europeanexpeditions took place during 1820–1865 and most American were conducted during1830–1910 (Fig. 1). Except for one ship from Bremen, the port of departure for all theEuropean expeditions was London (including neighboring harbors like Gravesend)and that for the American expeditions New Bedford. The pooling of logbooks intocertain periods reflects the changing strength of the fleets over time and it is thus

Figure 6. Annual distribution of whaling effort of American expeditions on the GibraltarStraits ground. Effort is expressed as the number of days on the ground in periods of 10 d.


Table 1. Days spent processing sperm whales according to the number of individualstaken. Processing includes chasing, cutting, boiling, and stowing down the oil produced.

Number of spermwhales taken Mean SD n

1 4.15 ±1.08 262 5.07 ±1.94 153 5.57 ±2.37 74 8.00 – 14 5.30 ±1.53 3

assumed that this strength is proportional to fishing effort in the North Atlantic and,by extension, in the Gibraltar Straits grounds. However, earlier years are most likelyto be underrepresented. The practice of keeping logbooks dates back to at least 1553(Sherman 1965), and it was already well established among whaling vessels when thefirst American expeditions to the eastern North Atlantic started with the opening ofthe Azores ground in 1763–1765 (Clarke 1954). However, the preservation rate ofthe logbooks from earlier periods has undoubtedly been lower.

Most whaling vessels that crossed the area during the first half of the 19th century(1820–1848) were European and appeared to have been unaware of the significantaggregation of sperm whales in the Straits. In most cases, these vessels were boundfor the Indian and Pacific grounds and, when in transit, chased any whale sighted( Jackson 1978, Sherman et al. 1986, Barrow 2001). The grounds of the Straits orneighboring waters were crossed during the outgoing passage but vessels followed rel-atively offshore routes (Fig. 2). Compared to the British component, adequate sourcematerials from other European countries are elusive. The few remaining logbooksfrom the German fishery (1836–1869), with a fleet based in Bremen and Bremer-haven, indicate that the vessels also headed mostly to the South and North PacificOceans (Sherman et al. 1986) without conducting whaling in the Straits. Theirsouthward track was also offshore with the exception of the ship Sophie that crossedthe area. Extant detailed catch records from the French fishery are equally scarce,and the few surviving logbooks from Dunkirk (Sherman et al. 1986) also indicatea preference for grounds in the southern hemisphere, with no apparent interest inthe areas around the Straits. This can be further explained by the fact that whaling

Table 2. SPUE and CPUE for sperm whales, and SPUE for any cetacean species, in search-ing and processing modes. For sighting and catching sperm whales, values were derived froma total sample of 1,003 d in searching mode and 278 d in processing mode. For sighting anycetacean, values were derived from a total sample of 813 d in searching mode and 244 d inprocessing mode. Differences among modes were highly significant (P < 0.01) for the SPUEof cetaceans but not for the CPUE or the SPUE of sperm whales.

In searching mode In processing mode

Rate n Rate n

SPUE sperm whales 8.17 82 11.15 31CPUE sperm whales 8.97 90 11.15 31SPUE any cetacean 44.16 359 24.59 60


Figure 7. Sightings of sperm whales per unit of effort (SPUE) throughout the season,broken into 10-d periods. SPUE = sightings × 100/d in searching mode.

in southern France, particularly in its early period, focused mostly on right whalesand neglected sperm whales (Best 1983, Du Pasquier 1986). No logbook or catchrecords appear to have survived from the few known registered Spanish whaling boatsfrom the period. Two vessels recorded as whalers from the Cadaques port in 1843and 1868 (Rahola and Rahola 1976) were of too small tonnage to carry try-worksonboard and thus to conduct sperm whaling in open waters. Ships from that port andof similar tonnage routinely engaged in fishing for coral in the Cape Verde Islandsfrom 1850 to 1870 (e.g., MS Llibre dels Estats de Joaquim, private collection), so ithas been suggested that these two whalers may have been engaged in the shore-based humpback fishery that developed in the islands in this period (Reeves et al.2002).

In some cases, logbooks from European vessels register whale sightings or captureswhile sailing around the Iberian Peninsula, but in many cases there is an absence ofreferences to whales and there are reasonable doubts as to whether searching effortoccurred. Indeed, the European fleet did not appear to have noticed a sperm whaleaggregation around the Straits or, if they did, the aggregation was not considered ofenough relevance to deserve exploitation. We found no record or logbook of Europeanvessels sailing through the region after 1848. In the second half of the 19th century,whaling declined in France and Germany, and the bulk of the British whaling fleetmoved to ports in Scotland and northern England from where it targeted bowheadand right whales in arctic waters, thus, never venturing into the central or southernAtlantic (Jackson 1978, Hepton 1985, Sherman et al. 1986, Buchan 1993, Credland1995, Barrow 2001).

Conversely, although several American whaling expeditions also crossed the areain the first half of the 19th century and recorded the occurrence of sperm whaleabundance there (e.g., reports of Hiram Weeks, mate of the ship William Thompson,1835–1838, as recorded in a 1854 entry in Wood 1831–1873), all the logbooks fromwhich we detected whaling in these grounds corresponded to expeditions during theperiod 1862–1889 (Appendix 1). These expeditions were not restricted to the Straits,


but typically lasted 2 or 3 yr and covered wide geographic ranges, often extendingthrough more than one ocean. However, irrespective of their final destination, whalerswhose logbooks were examined had commonly (9 out of 17 logbooks) sailed fromNew England and cruised clockwise to whale in the Western and the Two Fortiesgrounds, the Azores (Western Islands ground), the Gibraltar Straits ground, the Steenor the Madeira grounds, the Canary Islands, San Antonio grounds, and the CapeVerde Islands. Afterward, they often made a transatlantic passage to the Dominicaground, to return again to the Western grounds via the Charleston grounds and thenrecommenced the cycle. A frequent variant (6 out of 17 logbooks) after reaching theCanary or the Cape Verde Islands was to divert to the south and head first to the Cornellgrounds and then cross the Equator; these vessels then headed westward through theTwelve Forty or the Cornell grounds to the Brazil/Rio de la Plata (Argentina) area,or eastward to the Gulf of Guinea and Angola grounds, and later ascended againto the Equator, then to the Dominica ground, to eventually head home or resumeclockwise sailing in the central North Atlantic. Hence, in all cases, the grounds ofthe Straits of Gibraltar were visited by vessels from the Western Grounds or theAzores that were bound for the Canary or the Cape Verde Islands. The durationof the stay in the Straits varied between 1 and 4 mo, depending mostly on whalesightings.

While in the area, whalers targeted mostly the sperm whale. Sighting rates forthis species were comparable, though clearly in the lower range, to those in othersperm whaling grounds, for example, in the Northwest Pacific (Bannister et al. 1983,Tillman and Breiwick 1983) and the East Indian Ocean (Wray and Martin 1983).Pilot whales and dolphins were also routinely taken and processed for oil, as well assea turtles and, exceptionally, in one case, a blue whale. Although whales identifiedas “finbacks” were frequently spotted, no apparent attempt was made to catch them.However, Reeves et al. (2002) report some catches of “finbacks,” in this case likelyto be Bryde’s whales, with bomb lances in the Cape Verde Islands by vessels of thesame fleet (though by none of those examined here), and Wray and Martin (1983)describe that American sperm whalers occasionally lowered boats for chasing finwhales in the Indian Ocean. Even when targeting only sperm whales, most vessels,particularly American, recorded sightings of any cetacean or, at least, of any largecetacean (Appendix 3). In addition to sperm whales, these included “finback” whales(which were likely to be fin whales in most cases although some sei and Bryde’s whalesmay also have been spotted), blue whales, humpback whales, pilot whales, killerwhales, Risso’s or other blunt-headed dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, and “dolphins”that, given the cetacean fauna in the area, were most probably common or stripeddolphins.

Whaling effort mostly concentrated on the Atlantic side of the Straits, but at leasttwo expeditions, the John Dawson in 1865 and the President II in 1869, searched forwhales in the Mediterranean Sea (Fig. 3). The latter spent 16 d there and did notventure away from the Alboran Sea, but the John Dawson invested 67 d in sailing up toCorfu, in western Greece. However, success was very limited and only a few sightingsof sperm whales and pilot whales (Globicephala melas) were made, resulting in a meagercatch of one sperm whale south of the island of Minorca and five pilot whales off thesouthern coast of Spain. This is consistent with the low abundance of sperm whales inthe area (Gannier et al. 2002). The John Dawson also made several fin whale sightingsin the Ligurian Sea, today a well-known summer feeding ground for this species(Notarbartolo di Sciara et al. 1993, Littaye et al. 2004). On the Atlantic side, catchesof sperm whale were quite aggregated and located over and off the continental slope


Figure 8. Sperm whaling grounds in the North Atlantic. 1: Southern ground, 2: Westernground, 3: Two Forties ground, 4: Commodore Morris ground, 5: Western Islands ground, 6:Steen ground, 7: Madeira ground, 8: Straits of Gibraltar ground, 9: Canary Islands ground,10: St. Antonio ground, 11: Cape Verde Islands ground, 12: Cornell ground, 13: Twelve Fortyground, 14: Dominica or West Indies ground, and 15: Charleston ground. Some sources alsomention a 36/36 ground, which would merge with the Western, the Two Forties and theWestern Islands ground. Name, locations, and boundaries of the grounds are compiled fromClark (1884–1887), Townsend (1935) and Ashley (1942), unpublished charts from the NewBedford Whaling Museum, and information extracted from logbooks.

extending from Kenitra to Tangier, on the coast of Morocco. Conversely, sightings ofbaleen whales, including a few blue and humpback whales, which are now exceptionalin the area, were somewhat more widespread throughout the area covered by thevessels. Although the area is relatively close to Cintra and Gorrei, no sighting ofright whales was reported in the logbooks of any of the expeditions studied. Cintraand Gorrei are the bays where the last wintering northeastern Atlantic right whaleswere taken during the 19th century (Reeves and Mitchell 1986, Reeves et al. 2002),and the Straits grounds would purportedly have been along the migratory route ofthese whales to and from their northern feeding grounds.

Once the vessels had reached the area, they spent days or weeks almost in the sameposition and, although not anchored, they appear to have been quite stationary. Boatswere lowered when whales were spotted and, in doing so, the operation resembled“bay whaling” by pelagic whalers as, for example, in the humpback fishery at theCape Verde Islands (Reeves et al. 2002). The area was frequented mostly duringspring and early summer, with a clear peak around June–July (Fig. 6). It is unclearwhy the fleet adjusted to this timing, but this may have been more for operationalreasons than a result of seasonal variations in the abundance of sperm whales. Thus,


SPUE showed no clear trend throughout the season (Fig. 7). Moreover, no accurateinformation is available on seasonal movements of the species in the North Atlanticand, particularly in this region, catches of sperm whales during modern whalingoperations did not show any clear pattern either (Sanpera and Aguilar 1992). Hence,the species appears to be present there year round with no significant variations inabundance. The whaling vessels may have spent the early summer season in thegrounds of the Straits and then left before autumn for the Canaries or the Cape VerdeIslands, impelled by the desire to reach these islands in time for taking advantageof the trade winds necessary to cross the Atlantic, which in this region blow fromOctober to May (Cornell 2002). Given that trade winds have a S–SW direction, theargument would apply both to vessels crossing the Atlantic westward as well as tothose heading south toward African equatorial grounds.

Whale processing required several days, depending on the number of individualssecured and their size. Single sperm whales took a mean of 4.15 d, and multiple whalesrequired longer periods. However, the increase in time was not proportional (Table 1);it is likely that in many cases single captures corresponded to large bulls, but multiplecatches were obtained from reproductive schools mostly composed of females andcalves, which were smaller and therefore easier to process. In intermediate latitudessuch as those in which the Straits are located, sperm whale populations consist mainlyof breeding herds composed of many juveniles and medium to large bachelor bulls(Best 1979). Unfortunately, barrelage records were recorded only exceptionally in thelogbooks examined, so the size of the animals taken cannot be estimated from thissource.

Having a whale alongside the vessel or processing the animal did not excludesearching effort; boats were lowered, and whales were chased and eventually taken,while the core of the crew was still engaged in processing a previous catch. However,searching effort undoubtedly diminished to a certain degree. Thus, the rate of sightingany cetacean in a given day ×100 significantly decreased from 44.16 when the vesselwas searching to 24.59 when she was processing a catch (Table 2). However, rathersurprisingly, the rate of sighting or capturing a sperm whale was not significantlydifferent while the vessel was processing than while it was searching. This apparentcontradiction is probably caused by the fact that sperm whales are not distributedhomogeneously but tend to aggregate. Therefore, the likelihood of encountering anindividual would have been greater when another had been spotted on the same orprevious days. This effect appears to override the decrease in searching effort whileprocessing a previous catch.

The total number of sperm whales caught in the regions around the Straits ofGibraltar region is essential to derive estimates of historical population size and tostudy later evolution of the population (Baker and Clapham 2004). However, in thecase of the Straits grounds, data on catches are elusive. Because the catch obtained inthese grounds was only a marginal portion of the product of the voyage, the groundswere never noted in the destinations of the whaling expeditions when reported byvessel masters, for example, in Starbuck (1878) or in Hegarty (1959). This lack of no-tation raises two main difficulties. First, it precludes any assessment of the proportionthat the expeditions studied represent in relation to the total number of expeditionsthat occurred in the region. In principle, any whaling expedition heading to theeastern Atlantic, either South or North, or to the Indian or Pacific Oceans may havefished in these grounds. An exhaustive examination of all logbooks containing in-formation would be unfeasible and would allow quantification only of the catchesobtained in expeditions covered by the surviving books. Second, given that the catch


in the grounds of the Straits was marginal, it is impossible to assess it through thefigures on voyage oil production reported by Starbuck (1878), Hegarty (1959), orother sources. To this, we should add that, although knowledge on American whalingis fairly good, some bias is to be expected. The proportion of American journals andlogbooks for the 18th century and first quarter of the 19th is comparatively small com-pared to that for later periods (Sherman et al. 1986), and logbooks from the Europeanfleet, although only of marginal relevance, are much more scarce (Smith and Reeves2003).

The logbooks studied here contained records of 128 sperm whales being tried outduring a period of 27 yr (1862–1889). “Gamming” and sighting records indicate thatat least another seven New England whalers carried out significant whaling in thegrounds simultaneously to the vessels studied (Appendix 2). Open-boat whaling op-erations always involved some whales being struck, and often killed, but not secured.Hunting loss varied between species and was affected by a number of operationalelements such as whalemen skills, prevailing weather conditions, and technologyused. Scammon (1874) calculated an overall LR of 1.11 (one out of ten whales struckwas lost), and Reeves et al. (1999) one of 1.25–1.57 for right whales. Because thechance of sinking was apparently lower for sperm whales than for any baleen whalespecies except the gray whale (Hohman 1928), the sperm whale LR was probably inthe lower range of the above values. Kugler (1981) estimated for sperm whales anLR of 1.10–1.15 worldwide, Wray and Martin (1983) of 1.28 for the Indian Ocean,Bannister et al. (1983) of 1.20–1.61 for the western North Pacific, and Hope andWhitehead (1991) of 1.04–1.23 for the Galapagos Island. In our sample, only threeof the logbooks or diaries examined described struck but lost whales. From these,we calculated a LR of 1.31 per whale struck. It is unclear what fraction of thesestruck but lost whales eventually died as a consequence of the encounter with thewhalemen; therefore, it is difficult to assess true whale removals from the population.Whatever the case, this figure is consistent with those produced by other researchersand would yield a total number of 237 sperm whales effectively removed over theperiod 1862–1889. Although the vessels identified as working in the grounds of theStraits all corresponded to the above period, we cannot disregard operations by otherships before or after these dates. Thus, the above catch figure can be taken only as alower bound for an estimate of the true take.

Sperm whale catches by modern whaling in the 20th century were slightly higher.Three hundred and fifty-six individuals were reportedly caught in the area aroundthe Straits of Gibraltar between 1921 and 1926, 5 in 1933, and 483 between 1948and 1954 (Sanpera and Aguilar 1992). Over a period of 33 yr these figures accountfor a total catch of 844 sperm whales. It is noteworthy that, although the relativesighting frequency of sperm/fin whales by American whalers in that area was 1.2:1,modern operations took 4,535 fin whales along the same period, a figure 5.4 timeshigher than that of sperm whales. This difference should not be necessarily attributedto a greater relative abundance or easiness of catch of fin whales but, more likely, to ahigher commercial interest of modern whaling operations in baleen whale products(Sanpera and Aguilar 1992).

The demographic structure of the sperm whale population in the North Atlantic isnot known. However, recovery of scientific tags and of toggle heads from Azorean har-poons has shown movements of individuals from Canada to NW Spain, and from theAzores to NW Spain and Iceland. These data suggest that the North Atlantic popula-tion has little or no structure (Aguilar 1985). Consequently, the species is currently as-sumed to belong to a single, homogeneous stock (International Whaling Commission


2005). Although there are estimates of density for the northeastern North Atlantic,including Iceland and the Faeroe Islands (Gunnlaugsson and Sigurjonsson 1990,Christensen et al. 1992), the size of the overall population in this ocean is unknown(Whitehead 2002). The few hundred individuals that were caught in the 19th cen-tury by open-boat fishery in the Straits of Gibraltar were unlikely to have per se asignificant impact on the overall population. However, in other regions of the NorthAtlantic the species was simultaneously and subsequently caught in much largernumbers both by open-boat whalers and by modern land-based or floating factories.Thus, in the neighboring waters of NW Spain alone, 6,317 sperm whales were takenbetween 1951 and 1980 (Sanpera and Aguilar 1992). Comparable or greater removalsalso occurred in the Azores Islands, Madeira, Iceland, northern Norway, and otherNorth Atlantic locations from about the 1760s to 1985 (Starbuck 1878, Townsend1935, Clarke 1954, Jonsgard 1977, Sigurjonsson 1988). Further research is requiredto complete the catch history of sperm whales in the North Atlantic, particularly dur-ing the open-boat period, and to derive the original size and the historical trajectoryof the population.

Figure 9. Bark Canton, of New Bedford (courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum).


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the staff of the libraries where we conducted logbook searches and, in particular,Stuart Frank, Michael Dyer, and Laura Pereira of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Paul Cyrof the New Bedford Public Library, and Phil Weimerskirch of the Providence Public Library.Randy Reeves and Tim Smith provided helpful suggestions and assisted in identifying elusivevessels operating in the area. Randy Reeves also revised and much contributed to improvingthe draft manuscript. Michael Lapides, of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, helped in oursearch for photographs from the whaling boats operating in the area. Figure 9 is the propertyof the New Bedford Whaling Museum and is published with permission. Aina Aguilar did asubstantial part of the painful correction and validation of the data and produced the maps.We also thank the New Bedford Whaling Museum for generously providing accommoda-tion during the logbook examination. Financial support for this study was provided by theUniversity of Barcelona and the FDS Foundation through travel grants.

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Received: 27 March 2006Accepted: 10 October 2006

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

The following supplementary material is available for this article online:Supplementary Appendix 1Supplementary Appendix 2Supplementary Appendix 3

OPEN-BOAT WHALING ON THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR GROUND AND ADJACENT WATERS

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