From the next year, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) will bring outcomes to expand our perspectives on the current environmental challenges involving the conservation of marine biodiversity and the sustainability of human societies. It seems a very welcome opportunity to dimension the outreach of paradigm shift in human-whale interactions and its repercussions as a cultural phenomenon in influent global discourses, from the whaling moratorium implemented by the International Whaling Commission, in 1986. In force until now, the moratorium brought the turning point that redefined the worldwide status of the large cetaceans, after centuries of widespread, unregulated and intense whaling activity.

In Brazil, early records mentioned diverse species of whales moving toward the Brazilian coast from April to October, to enjoy the calm, warm waters while giving birth to and nursing their calves. The presence of large cetaceans awoke the interest of the Portuguese Crown and, in 1602, a Basque crew was recruited for the first few whaling seasons on the Bahian coastline. Beginning in the eleventh century, the Basques were the first Western people to organise whaling activity, using small open boats, hand-delivered harpoons, large hooks and blowhole plugs. Together with the Portuguese, they became pioneers in offshore whaling and open sea expansion of these activities.

In the Brazilian Atlantic coastline, this traditional whaling system was adopted as the model carried out at several points along the Brazilian coast, under the Portuguese ‘Royal Fish’ monopoly, lasted from 1614 to 1801. Permanent or semi-permanent locations equipped with the necessary appliances for hunting, dismantling and oil processing, were built along the Brazilian coast, usually set at the entrance of bays and straits. It was called ‘armações’ and the first were built on the island of Itaparica, Bahia, as of 1612, in Rio de Janeiro as of 1620, and in São Paulo as of 1734. Later, from 1746, armações were built in Santa Catarina. In 1619, was required that hunted whales must be cleaned at sea, outside of Guanabara Bay, to ‘the bad smell that they emitted would not infect the city’ of Rio de Janeiro.

The main target species were the humpback and the southern right whale, which migrated to the South Atlantic during the breeding season. The latter’s name coming from the notion that it was an ‘easy’ catch and therefore, the ‘right’ prey. The calves were harpooned first in order to atract the adult females. Once harpooned, the wounded whale would drag a boat along for hours, until a second boat approached to apply the final blows that bled the animal to death. Accounts emphasised the emotion and risks of the activity, as well as the popular excitement that accompanied the “tragic spectacle that turned the waters of the bay red” to the moment of the dead animal’s arrival on shore, to the sound of improvised song.

After the whaling period, from June to September, whalers returned to Europe with part of the processed oil. From the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, whale oil was the main source of energy for lighting of cities, homes and farms throughout the world, and, in Brazil, it was essential for round-the-clock work in sugar mills. The most valuable goods, such as oil and baleen (a filter-feeding system inside the mouths of some species of whales), were exported to Castile, France, Hamburg, Genoa and Venice. Fins were used as a frame for women’s clothing, hats and helmets. Whale tongue was a delicacy consumed by the European clergy and nobility.

In Brazil, whale oil was also used as an alloy in mortar in construction and it was also indicated for the treatment of rheumatism and certain skin diseases. The bones were used in building fences and furniture, and also served as platforms on river banks where washerwomen did their laundry. Meat, both fresh and salted, was food for coastal communities and slaves, who made up the largest portion of the whaling workforce. Whale meat was considered worthless, yet freely distributed to the poor. It was believed that fishing would be abundant for those who distributed meat to the needy.

By European standards, the Brazilian ‘armações’ were not considered large and the oil that they processed was of poor quality, compromised by the feeble production techniques. The blubber was cut in pieces that were way too large, the furnaces were poorly constructed and the oil often burned, from being boiled too long. Furthermore, the need for large quantities of firewood to keep the furnaces going led to the vast destruction of forests. Meat residues and fibres accumulated at the bottom of the cauldrons and the boiled oil became rancid, dark and fetid. Often, the oil deteriorated over the course of the transatlantic voyage and oil barrels were thrown into the ocean before reaching Lisbon. Nonetheless, profits were excellent.

Many human lives were lost, both on land and at sea. No man would get on board a whaling ship without first receiving a priest’s blessing – meant for the ship as well as its instruments. The long workday within the factories was aggravated by its unhealthy and dangerous environment. Furnaces boiled the fat continuously and the enslaved workers suffered frequent accidents, such as hot oil splashing in their eyes, or burns and mutilations caused by falling pans of the scalding liquid.

In Itaparica, in the best years, three to four animals were slaughtered per day. Blubber was wasted and many parts of the whale were simply cast off; when they were captured in large numbers, it was common to leave many of the carcasses rotting on the beaches. In Santos, São Paulo, in the middle of the 18th century, one of the contractors, Tomé Gomes Moreira, ordered whale hunting to be carried out for the sole purpose of using the fins.

In 1790, the influential statesman, José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, denounced at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon, the decline of the activity and the archaic whaling methods that were practiced in Brazilian waters, as well as problems in managing contracts and the challenges posed by the aggressive competition that characterized the initial stages in which British and North American whalers set their sights on South Atlantic waters. The end of the Portuguese monopoly, in 1801, was caused by the decline of the whale population as well as the lack of Portuguese investment in new technologies, by improving vessels for the development of activity on the high seas. The declining activity still represented a considerable source of sustenance for the seaside communities who worked in the armações. Freed slaves took over the boats and commercialisation of products – oil and meat, for the most part.

When petroleum was discovered, in 1859, whale oil was substituted by kerosene, but the expansion of industrial whaling technologies breathed new life into activities on the high seas. This was the start of the most predatory phase of worldwide industrial whaling, The conventional land stations became obsolete, since that whales were processed entirely on-board factory ships. Over the last century, the activity promoted by great whaler nations, as USA, Norway, UK, Soviet Union and Japan, resulted in, approximately, 3,000,000 whales killed around the world.

Whaling was historically exalted in prose and verse as the victory of human reason over the strength and fury of the useful Leviathan, a sea beast. Over the centuries of Brazilian whaling, the only account that breaks with the hegemonic model that naturalised the relations between dominant humans and the natural world was the poem ‘Whale fishing’. The Bahian poet João de Brito (1671–1747) recognised the singularity of the animal that was slaughtered, a sentient being who was obliged to suffer the painful drama ending its life, expressing a precocious spirit of change that was only to take root centuries later:

“…
From such effort, the whale calf, finally, tires;
And, while the afflicted mother girds him to her breast,
Steeply into her flank a steel spear is thrust,
Spraying her blood and colouring the waves.
The unfortunate maddened whale then flees,
Roaring, without stopping, moves far, comes back,
She wants to die for her calf, and, risking her life,
She rages, struggling to see if they will let go.
Impossible! … The repeated blow
Puts her on the run again. The intention is holy
But her energy runs out. Her next moan
Signals her final moment.
They must then have her as theirs.
They harpoon her too; and she hardly feels
The tenacious weapon; what really wounds
Is not to be able to free her calf, it is more poignant.
At the center of the table, joy reigns,
But around it, sadness spills out;
And the sea in the splendour of the day becomes
The sinister stage of a terrible drama.
The whale, the colossal honour of the ocean,
From whose mouth blood flows in waves,
Goes back to her calf, still alive, with human gaze,
Struggles, hesitates, and panting she dies …
The sublime mother fulfils her mission,
Immolated in defence of her young,
And the king of creation, hero of the crime,
Full of pride, surveys his prey! …”

The author

Ana Lucia Camphora is Psychologist, Master Degree in Psycho-sociology of Communities and Social Ecology (2003) and PhD in Social Sciences (2008). Her interdisciplinary approach is rooted in previous works as an environmental consultant in economic sustainability of protected areas, environmental policy instruments. From 2013, as independent scholar, moved to the field of inter-species studies and taught in postgraduate courses in Environmental Law and Animals in Law (2015 to 2018). Her book, ‘Animals and society in Brazil from the 16th to the 19th century’, launched in 2017, seeks to pave the way forward to a contemporary thought on such interlinkages and had the institutional support of the Brazilian Academy of Veterinary Medicine.

Referência para ilustração (uso público com citação abaixo)

By Gabriel Barathieu / Réunion Underwater Photography
https://www.flickr.com/photos/barathieu/7277953560/,
CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25163798