In the eastern North Atlantic, two species of whale may have been hunted to extinction by medieval European hunters, according to a recent examination of ancient whale bones.
The North Atlantic right whale is considered functionally extinct in Europe, and only a small number can be found elsewhere.
The activity of whaling is believed to have existed in coastal communities for thousands of years, despite taking place on an industrial scale during the 19th and 20th centuries. Researchers have analyzed ancient whale bones in an effort to better understand how previous whaling practices might influence current whale management.
“Mediaeval cultures are especially associated with the early growth of whaling, but the targets and scale of these activities are poorly understood given the limitations of pre-modern historical records,” wrote the authors of a new study investigating ancient whaling.
Their study attempted to identify the primary species that were targets of early whaling and how frequently those species were recorded in archaeological records in comparison to other species, both at the time and during subsequent industrial whaling.
The research examined 719 whalebone fragments from sites in northern and western Europe, dating from roughly 3500 BCE to the 18th century. The composition of a protein called collagen in the bone was examined by the researchers to identify the species to which each fragment belonged. Since collagen composition varies among whale species, it serves as a reliable identification.
They found some pretty illogical results.
Rarely were the dominant targets of industrial whaling, such the blue and humpback whales, as well as today's common minke whales, to be detected among the bone fragments. Instead, they discovered that the North Atlantic right whale and the Atlantic grey whale were the two species most frequently encountered in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean and are now extinct.
The researchers deduced from this that, in accordance with the scant number of pre-modern historical sources mentioning whales, right whales may have been often targeted by medieval hunters. The discovery that grey whales were also frequent prey was unexpected because their mention in the documents is less frequent.
The study's authors put out the following theories as to why the two species were hunted to extinction:
“Both the grey whale and the North Atlantic right whale may have fallen victim to a perception of limitless natural abundance, due to ease of hunting and initially high numbers in coastal waters during the inception and early development of European whaling.”
Regardless of whether they detected a fall in population, once they were a fixed part of whaling technique, hunters may have continued to hunt them until they were extinct.
It's uncertain if right and gray whales were hunted because they were simpler to catch or because they were the species that were more prevalent at the time. The study came to the conclusion that the answer to this question is crucial to understanding both the ecology of whales now and, potentially, the oceans of the distant past.
