The Tangalooma Whaling Station
From 1952 to 1962 Tangalooma used to be one of the largest shore-based whaling stations in the southern hemisphere. During the ten years of its operation, a total of 6,277 humpback whales were killed in these waters.
The whales were mostly hunted for the whale oil, which was obtained by boiling down the thick layer of fatty tissue (blubber). One fully grown humpback whale could yield up to 9 tonnes of whale oil. The oil was used for many things including cooking oils, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, glycerines, cosmetics, perfumes, etc., and in high demand around the world.
Some of the higher grade meat was also sold for human consumption (mostly to overseas markets), while lower grade meat, bones and offal were ground down into a high-protein meat meal to be fed to live stock or used as fertilizer.
The Beginnings
In the years after the Second World War, the Commonwealth government of Australia was looking to improve overseas trade by establishing a whaling industry along the East Coast. In 1948 the company Whale Products Pty Ltd was formed, based in Sydney. Captain Alf Melson, a Norwegian captain with 40 years of whaling experience was recruited to set up whaling stations.
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Capt Melson chose Tangalooma as a site for this whaling station for four main reasons:
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Close to a major shipping port (Brisbane)
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Freshwater table under the island
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Sheltered bay-side location
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Close to the migratory route of the humpback whales
Three whale chasers were brought from Norway with 51 experienced Norwegian crew and operations were underway in June 1952.
Whaling at Tangalooma
The three vessels were sailed out of Tangalooma in the early morning, to the northern end of Moreton Island. This is where the whales were found and harpooned. The carcasses were tied up alongside the ships and towed back to Tangalooma for processing.
At Tangalooma the whales were winched onto the rooftop of the flensing deck. Here the blubber and meat was cut off in big chunks and pushed through holes in the ceiling of the flensing deck into cookers underneath.
The station was manned by 120 men who worked 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. It took about one hour to fully process a humpback whale.
The whaling station had a quota of 600 whales they were allowed to catch each year and a minimum size of 10.7m (35ft) the whales had to be long. However, undersized whales were frequently caught.
Whaling to Whale Watching
In the 1950s the Tangalooma whaling station was running a lucrative business. But by 1960 the whales were becoming increasingly difficult to find and catch rates dropped. In 1962 Tangalooma employed a fleet of two spotter planes and five ships, but only managed to catch 68 whales. This is when the whaling station had to shut down as it was simply not profitable to continue, as there were no whales left to hunt.
Before whaling started in these waters, there probably used to be around 40,000 individual humpback whales in this population. After only ten years of commercial whaling, there were as little as 300 of them left. In 1965 the humpback whales were declared an endangered species and they have been fully protected ever since. Luckily, they have been able to slowly recover and are now up to about 20,000 individuals or around half the original population size.
Tangalooma has since turned into a family resort and now runs Whale Watching Cruises from June to October every year. Whale watching operates under strict regulations and is a much more sustainable, friendly and also more lucrative industry. In fact, whale watching around Australia brings in ten times as much money as whaling ever did!
The Humpback Whale
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaengliae) are the fifth largest of the great whales. They grow to about 15m in length and 40 tonnes in weight. They belong to the baleen whales, as such they don’t have teeth but rather baleen plates in their mouth. Baleen are coarse bristly plates made from keratin that hang from the whale’s upper jaw and act as a strainer, trapping small prey such as krill or baitfish.
Humpbacks spend the summer months in Antarctica where they feed on krill, then travel north in winter to mate and give birth to their calves in the warm tropical waters off northern Queensland. This migration is a round-trip of 14,000km, completed every year.
Humpback whales are famous for their acrobatics and can often be seen breaching or leaping out of the water. They are also very curious and inquisitive animals that will often approach whale watch boats to “people watch” and interact with them!