Thankfully, horrific whale hunt now dead in the water

Greedy whalers pushed the species almost to the brink of extinction, but this has now mostly been replaced by popular whale watching tours each winter. The massacre of these magnificent leviathans halted in Australia in 1978 with international treaties.

The sad truth, however, is that many shore-based whaling stations had simply run out of whales to kill.

Besides saving wildlife, today's whale watching trips are a profitable and sustainable community business.

But why were these ocean behemoths ever hunted by commercial whalers in the first place? Well, it was Australia's first primary industry. There were five NSW ships engaged in whaling in 1827, rising to 76 in 1835.

In the 19th century, before synthetic products emerged, whales had a great variety of uses for humans, from animal feed, to frozen meat for export and fertiliser.

Foremost was oil for domestic lamps to illuminate homes and as lubricants, all made from a whale's outer coat of blubber. Whales also yielded soap, helped make margarine and "superior" dinner candles, and later detergents. Bones were also turned into corsets, whips, umbrella frames and hoops used under 19th century dresses. Another by-product was used for cosmetics as a base for perfumes.

In Eden, on NSW's far South Coast, where dead whales were hauled inshore for their blubber to be stripped, some people would pay to stand inside the smelly, warm carcasses in a supposed cure for rheumatism.

Whaling fleets hunted the world's oceans, initially at sea for years, with crews in small boats launched from sailing ships and armed with harpoons and lances pursuing their prey. Later came modern steel ships and harpoon guns with explosive heads.

But South Seas whaling seems to have barely touched the Hunter in colonial days. The closest might be infrequent visits by Yankee whalers in the 1820s, venturing into Port Stephens to obtain barrels of fresh water at "Jimmy's Well" at Salamander.

Best known whaling bases (and factories) in Australia were Norfolk Island (from 1956), at Moreton Island near Brisbane, Eden and at Cheyne Beach, near Albany, in Western Australia.

Often forgotten though is that today's tourism hot spot of Byron Bay was once a sea abattoir.

After their fishing industry crashed, the coastal township relied on the smelly, very messy business of whaling to survive. About 60 men were employed working in 12-hour shifts.

Between 1954 and 1962, about 1100 whales here alone were killed with locals alerted by the boom of a harpoon gun out at sea. The largest creature ever caught was a 15.9 metre (52.4 feet) female.

The surf around the jetty where a whale carcass was hauled ashore by crane and chains ran red with blood. Here, ravenous sharks snapped away at their fast-disappearing meal with the blubber about to be sliced off by workers and boiled down for oil. Afterwards, a 'blood pipe' then pumped liquid waste into the sea. Times have changed.

Over-exploitation of migrating whales meant the Aussie industry collapsed in about 1966. Fewer than 5000 whales, humpbacks and southern right whales, lived in the southern ocean by 1962.

The largest sperm whale to ever capture the public's imagination, however, was fictional.

In his 1851 novel Moby Dick, author Herman Melville (1819-1891) created an immortal tale of a Captain Ahab, an obsessed, vengeful whaling master, determined to kill a giant white whale called Moby Dick.

Ishmael is Melville's narrator in the novel and, interestingly, the albino rogue bull whale was inspired by a real-life 'monster' that crushed rowboats and was said to have also battered and sunk whaling ships hunting him.

The real scarred whale was called Mocha Dick, an enormous 70 foot (21 metre) creature, which may have been more than 100 years old when finally killed after 28 years off Brazil in 1838.

In death, more than 20 rusting harpoons were found stuck in his blubber and he trailed about 50 yards of rope.

Normally docile and curious, Mocha would swim around sailing ships but only attack them when enraged, like being chased and harpooned.

But Mocha Dick, although rare, was not unique as an albino whale. Since Mocha's death 186 years ago, there have been at least five other white whale sightings world-wide.

The latest one, this time spotted along the NSW coast, is a humpback called Migaloo.

"We sighted Migaloo our first season (in 1996). We were trying out whale watching as a Port Stephens business. It saved our bacon," the noted conservationist and founder of Imagine Cruises out of Nelson Bay, Frank Future, told Weekender.

"The whole cetacean family is quite intelligent. Bottle nose dolphins are probably the most intelligent and sophisticated, but whales have bigger brains," the whale-chaser said.

Future said that as one of the first business operators in NSW to offer whale watching, he enjoyed the opportunity of allowing visitors to see the majestic sea creatures up close.

"This generation of whales have never known whaling (and killing) so we have discovered they have no feeling of being threatened by man," the eco-warrior said.

"Out on the ocean, we wait 100 metres away from them, but they are often so curious about us that they're likely to seek you out, to come closer. They are intrigued by us.

"In 1996 there were only an estimated 1500 whales migrating annually up the NSW coast between May and November. Now there's over 40,000 travelling up north to warmer waters of the Barrier Reef," Future said.

"About August, juveniles are often encountered. About three or four will concentrate around us. We call them 'muggings' and we have to reverse the boat out very carefully.

"Whales can communicate over vast distances in very high and also low frequencies. We put hydrophones down and listen to the clicks and songs. They tend to adopt a song every year, but modify it.

"Breaching is also a method of communicating. To see a 40-tonne whale coming out of the water is really something and once one starts others follow," Future said.

"I advise yachtsmen, especially sailing at night, to leave a radio on so whales can hear it in the water through the hull. Whales have to rest sometimes and they're probably only fully aware if they hear a propeller.

"I had a mate, a yachtsman, once coming back at night through Bass Strait. It was a silent and speedy craft and it hit a whale. The next day they found the deck covered in blood. The boat must have hit the whale's artery.

"That's my concern now with the offshore wind farm proposal. In future, big ships most certainly will be coming closer to the coast into the whale migration path.

"Remembering whales are quite intelligent, I'll tell you a story involving an Aussie girl, in Tonga, I think. She was out swimming when a whale suddenly came up from beneath, lifting her onto its back. She was surprised but delighted.

"It then took her back to her nearby boat and very carefully placed her in the water again. The girl climbed into her boat where her shocked companions told her: 'Did you know you were being chased by a shark and that whale just saved you?' " Future said.