Finbacks are the second largest living animal

The Blue Whales are very hard to catch or kill. This is due to their speed, size and strength making then rarely pursued by the early whalers. The Norwegian Svend Foyn is Equipped with a steamboat with harpoons designed specifically to catch large whales in 1864. (manhattan fruitier)

Even though these equipment has alow success rate, Foyn perfected the Harpoon. Sooner whale stations were established in different places particularly in the cost of Finnmark in the Northern Norway. In the year 1904, the last whaling station in Finnmark closed down because of dispute with local fisherman.

In the following years, Blue Whales are being hunted in Iceland in the year 1883, in Faroe Iskands, in the year 1894, in New Foundland, in  the year 1898 and in Spitsberg in the year 1903.

With the advent of the stirn slipway in factory ships in 1925, together with the use os steam-driven whale catchers, th Blue Whale and the Baleen Whale catching activities began to rise.

The increase of these activiteis are more particular in the Antartic and Sub-Antartic. An estimated of 29,000 Blue Whales in  the Antartic region were being killed between 1930 and 1931 because of these ships. The Blue Whale population severely decrease by the end of World War II.

It was in the year 1946 when the first quotas that restricts international trade in whales was being set-up. However this restriction is ineffective and unsuccessful because authorities have lack of differentiation between species. Oftentimes endangered species could be hunted because some whalers thought it belong to other speceis foud in relative abundance.

In the year 1960’s, the International Whaling Commission band the Blue Whale and illegal whaling in the USSR halted finally by 1970’s. In that time, there are an estimated of about 330,000 Blue Whales had been killed in the Antartic alone, and estimated of 33,000 whales had been killed  in the rest of the Southern Hemisphere.

In the North Pacific, an estimated of 8,200 whales had been killed and there are an estimated 7,000 whales in the North Atlantic Region.

From the largest original population in the Antartic Region it was found that the population of the Blue Whale had been reduced to 0.15 percent.

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