Whale’s return a welcome sight
As the Wellington whale waves goodbye to the capital, a former whaler is glad to see the huge mammals back in Cook Strait.
While thousands have crowded the harbour’s edge over the past week to watch the southern right whale cavort, it is easy to forget that whales were once eagerly met with a harpoon.
New Zealand attracted whalers as early as the 1700s and an industry was established by the 1800s when whale products were in high demand.
Whale oil was particularly popular as a fuel for lamps.
Jon Perano’s family founded the Cook Strait’s longest running and last whaling operation – J A Perano and Company. They harvested whales 1911-1964 out of Fishing Bay on Tory Channel.
By the time Perano joined the company fulltime in 1961 at age 17, southern right whales were rare, having been hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1800s.
Perano said the Wellington whale – which appeared to have left on Wednesday morning, was a typical southern right. It displayed the same unworried nature that made them easy targets for early whalers.
The Tory Channel whalers mainly hunted humpbacks, for making margarine and pet food.
In the 1960s the company switched to sperm whales – for their oil. Perano had no regrets about his old job though he did believe whaling was an out-dated industry. ‘‘It’s certainly good to see them. It’s taken a long time for the right whale to come back.’’
Perano harpooned his first whale when he was 14 but only worked a few seasons before the industry in New Zealand ceased.
Advances in technology such as the lightbulb and synthetic oils meant demand for whale oil had long been on the decline, Perano said. In 1960 the company caught 226 humpback whales but by 1962 the catch was down to 26 which Perano puts down to Russian whalers in the Antarctic decimating the population which fed into New Zealand waters.
J A Perano and Company hunted sperm whales off Kaikoura until 1964 when the price of their oil slumped from £80 a tonne to £40. Lower returns and damage to their ship’s boiler that year made continuing the operation unsustainable.