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Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil
- qwertyuiop_ 2y agoHighly recommend the museum in New Bedford !
- firefoxd 2y agoYou have to see those whales skeletons in person to understand their sheer size. And if you want to know more than you need to about whales, pick up a copy of Moby Dick. Don't be intimidated by the size. I still can't believe this book was written in the 1800s. Catching a whale was akin to striking oil.
- stefanka 2y ago> Catching a whale was akin to striking oil. Quite literally, apparently.
- gurjeet 2y ago> to understand their sheer size In the linked article, towards the middle, the photo shows 2 people reading the plaque next to a pink structure, which appears to be that of a whale's heart. That, combined with the skeleton hanging over them, should give us an idea that we are no bigger to these whales, than probably an average snail is to us (between 5 cm and 9 cm).
- dmd 2y agoThe average snail is 2-5 cm, not 5-9 cm. Just sayin.
- ygra 2y agoPerhaps they meant slugs. In German at least, both are called Schnecken (just one is naked), so perhaps that persists in other languages as well.
- mkl 2y agoI think it's more likely different species in different places. I, in NZ, don't think I've ever seen a slug as much as 5cm long, let alone 9cm.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoLook up banana slug. Common where I live.
- card_zero 2y agoI'm guessing much, much smaller than that, taking microsnails into account. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-the-worlds-tiniest-snail https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-the-worlds-tinie... But let me just add up their lengths, along with the lengths of all giant african land snails and all other snails, and divide by the total number of snails in the world ... is there a statistical trick that could answer this, like the one for counting undiscovered species? Probably not.
- mordechai9000 2y agoAlso, In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. It is a non-fiction account of the wreck of the Essex, a Nantucket whaler, that was inexplicably "stove by a whale", and lost at sea - an unheard of occurrence at the time. The crew was forced to survive in open boats for weeks, and resorted to cannibalism. This was the story that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. The book is both a survival story and an investigation of the Nantucket whaling industry and whaling in general, as well as the social and economic background.
- drittich 2y agoThanks, sounds amazing! I've checked it out from local library.
- Blahah 2y agoThe Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky (book/audiobook) is excellent on this topic. The Basque, according to current evidence, invented whaling, and were culturally central to its interweaving with human history. The book tells the tale with rigour and flare.
- RobinL 2y agoThe whaling industry as depicted in Moby Dick is pretty high on my list of the most unbelievable things that really happened. Particularly the range of the boats and the method of catching the whales. Up there with the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and how the East India company managed to dominate the entire country in terms of sheer implausibility.
- ReptileMan 2y agoI would say the Ice trade was crazier. And if your rulers are bloodthirsty heart burners and skin flayers, even satan will be received warmly. I mean Huitzilopochtli is giving Kali run for her money in the deities I don't to live under competition. And east india - you replace the elite and the people underneath will continue following orders - the same happened with the Manchu conquering of china.
- njtransit 2y agoStrapping the whale to the side of the ship to be butchered while sharks feasted on the underside always seemed insane to me.
- tomcam 2y agoWhat other options existed?
- dreamcompiler 2y agoHere's the life-size blue whale sculpture outside the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Note the size of the people. https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/10/e1/e9/42/life-size-blue-whale.jpg https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/10/e1/e9/42/...
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- 1oooqooq 2y agoand yet, it was a mere road kill to a tanker
- fasa99 2y agoThis makes me strike upon an idea seeing as petroleum is leaking from the whale - might whales be used as a renewable oil resource in the same way as renewable lumber? Whale farms and such (not referring to online dating here, but literally a whale farm). The oil of whale might be used for many things such as lighting of lamp or lubrication of machine.
- whaleofatw2022 2y agoWhale oil used to be used for the things you mentioned, but you run into a lot of sustainability issues on top the ethical issues. (I mean FFS if the probe did what it did in star trek 4, imagine what they would have sent instead for your scenario.) Practically speaking, you can't easily just let the whales go out into the open due to the risk of someone else hunting them down vs cost of captivity or having them be 'monitored' in the wild.
- ricardo81 2y agoI recall hearing how the demand for whale oil fell off a cliff not long after electricity was scaled for lighting. Interesting in that now we're looking to move away from hydrocarbons which ultimately was how much of the electricity has been produced.
- worldvoyageur 2y agoCrude oil saved the whales from extinction. Kerosene, refined from crude oil, was at least as good as whale oil for lamps. It was also cheaper, so that was the end of the whaling industry. There were pathetic advertisements from the whale oil people of that time arguing for 'pure' whale oil over 'impure' substitutes. However kerosene was so obviously a better deal consumers switched with lightning speed anyway. As an aside, gasoline was a waste product of the crude oil refining process that produced kerosene. That meant very cheap fuel for the internal combustion engine which was starting its climb up the technology s-curve at the same time.
- perihelions 2y ago- "There were pathetic advertisements from the whale oil people of that time arguing for 'pure' whale oil over 'impure' substitutes." It's the same today: people pay premiums for vegetables fertilized with "pure" bird poop (guano) over equivalent phosphate rocks mined from the earth. e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/americas/30peru.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/americas/30peru.htm...
- adonovan 2y agoNonetheless whale oil remained very useful as a low temperature machine lubricating oil, and its use for that purpose increased so much that by the 1960s sperm whale catches were at their all-time highest, before abruptly falling with the rise of the environmental movement.
- madaxe_again 2y agoIt wasn’t quite immediate - margarine was invented to fill the gap on the demand side, and kept the industry going for quite a few decades. What killed off whaling was that they killed off the whales - it simply wasn’t economically viable to send ships out any more.
- qrush 2y agoOne of the best museums in MA. My kids love this place - there's a model whale heart to climb through, a scale replica whaling vessel fully rigged, real samples of whale oil to smell, plenty of harpoons, and a lot of art from the era. New Bedford is really one of the hidden gems of this state - I'm really glad South Coast Rail will be connecting it back to Boston after decades of being ignored. Worth a visit.
- mauvehaus 2y agoA great many of the paintings in their art collection are by Clifford Ashley of ABOK fame. Besides being a knot collector, he was an accomplished artist.
- jrootabega 2y agoHaving repeatedly almost killed myself from slipping on a small drop of oil on my kitchen floor in socks, this makes me feel like a nervous grandmother.
- chriscjcj 2y agoNot sure how this particular whale met its demise, but I'm guessing it probably should have been taking a statin.
- buttercraft 2y ago"The whale was discovered wrapped around the bow of a tanker that had accidentally killed him back in 1998. KOBO’s carcass was eventually towed to shore and dissected for research and educational purposes."
- sseagull 2y agoChemist pet peeve: “The oil catcher consists of a series of tubes that start at the tip of KOBO’s rostrum and funnel down into a beaker.” That’s an Erlenmeyer flask, not a beaker. The quote gets it right in the next sentence. Just sayin’ :)
- pwg 2y agoA prime example of thee "Gell-Mann Amnesia" effect: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- krisoft 2y agoNo it is not. It is merely an inaccuracy pointed out by an expert. For it to be an example of the "Gell-Mann Amnesia" effect sseagull would have to show some sign that they forgot that the wpri can make mistakes when they are reading something not within their expertise. That would be the "amnesia" part. Plus, is it even an inaccuracy? In common parlance beaker and flask are synonyms.[1] Simply regular people talking to regular people describing some glassware are not as accurate as a chemist talking to a chemist. 1: as evidenced that thesarus.com identifying `beaker` as the strongest synonym match for `flask` https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/flask https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/flask
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoTechnical terminology is frequently different from common use.
- mikestew 2y agoThat’s not even a “well, technically…”. My chemistry education stopped at high school 40 years ago, and even I remember the difference. It’s like confusing a bicycle with a car. And note that the person quoted uses the term “flask” exclusively. The word “beaker” only shows up parenthetically, because the reporter spent their time in chemistry class asking, “when am I ever going to need to know this?”
- ffujdefvjg 2y agoNBWM is absolutely fantastic. They have Clifford Ashley's (wrote Ashley Book of Knots) rope and knot collection, and some of his paintings too (he lived on the other side of the harbour). They also have the world's largest scrimshaw collection, and the Lagoda, the world's largest model wooden ship (1:2 scale IIRC), which you can walk around on and check out the ropework. Seamen's Bethel from Moby Dick is literally a block away. Easily the coolest museum I've been to. Interesting bit of trivia, New Bedford used to be the richest city in the planet because of the whaling industry.
- chx 2y agoThe typical claim made is "it was the wealthiest city per capita in North America in the first half of the 19th century" but on p23 https://npshistory.com/publications/nebe/clr.pdf https://npshistory.com/publications/nebe/clr.pdf claims it was the second in the state. New Orleans is claimed to be the nation's wealthiest in 1830s-1840s.
- bwanab 2y agoThe old housing stock certainly supports the notion that it was very wealthy at one point. NB reminds me of Troy, NY - another small but very wealthy city that fell on hard times when its main industries left. The presence of RPI seems to be helping Troy experience a bit of a renaissance. Hopefully, the new MBTA commuter rail connection will be a shot in the arm for New Bedford.
- potato3732842 2y agoWhile places like Lawrence, Springfield and New Bedford peaked when their local industries were booming money printers none of the outer Massachusetts cities really fell on the chronic "hard times" they're generally subject to now until the 1970s/1980s when shifting economic and regulatory circumstances finally killed the last of the industrial/manufacturing economic activity that had been sustaining them. Lowell is a great analogy to Troy since it has UMass Lowell to pump it full of money and it's arguably the least crappy of the "not Boston" cities in MA.
- dmix 2y ago24yrs if anyone is too lazy to read
- ahmedfromtunis 2y agoIf we woke up one day to discover that the skeleton was mercilessly destroyed, I think we already have our suspect :p All jokes aside, this got me curious to look for the definition of "oil", a word used to describe stuff extracted from plants, rocks and, apparently, animals too. It turns out that for a liquid to be classified as oil, according to Merriam Webster, it needs to be "flammable", "not dissolve in water" and "greasy". What's greasy, you ask? Well, it's smeared in... "oily matter".
- kijin 2y ago"Oil" used to mean olive oil and nothing else. Its usage gradually expanded to include other vegetable fats, liquid animal fats such as whale oil, and finally mineral oil when it was discovered. People back then weren't particularly interested in the chemical compositions of the different oils, only that they felt similar and served similar purposes. Meanwhile, animal fats that are solid at room temperature, such as butter and lard, were never really called "oil" despite being much closer to other edible fats than anything we dug up from a desert.
- phendrenad2 2y agoI thought whale oil was what you get when you boil the fatty tissue of the whale. Why would the skeleton have any oil in it?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- phendrenad2 2y agoI'm sorry whoever I offended enough to downvote this. I didn't realize whale skeletons were a touchy subject. I'm not an American so I don't know.
- mikestew 2y agoI’m confident that for every grumpy down voter that thinks they’re on Reddit, there a few others that will upvote an honest question that is getting downvoted to counteract. So Ms. Grumpy Redditor had the opposite of the desired effect.
- blipvert 2y agoGet the leg bone of a calf (preferably split) medium oven for 20mins. Some nice toast, chopped capers and parsley to help you clean up the oil. You’re welcome.
- thomastjeffery 2y agoGreat article. Awful website.
- poulsbohemian 2y agoOk I'm going to come out and say it because I think multiple people in this thread have hinted at the same confusion: What bloody kind of oil are we talking about here? Whale oil, that somehow was captured in the bones? Petroleum oil from the whale's encounter with the tanker? They basically buried the lede on this story and nowhere appear to explain why this particular whale is dripping some kind of "oil" that seemingly other museum example don't experience. So - anyone got any insight here?
- mattkrause 2y agoIt sounds like it’s whale oil because: - it’s coming from the bone marrow - it has a reddish tint - the curator says the smell is reminiscent of a whaling ship and not, say, a machine shop or oil rig.
- poulsbohemian 2y agoI think you are probably right, but then the natural question becomes - why? As in, is there something unique to this specimen and it's display? If I drive over to the aquarium in my state and examine the whale display, would it also drip?
- ekelsen 2y agoProbably not -- very few whale skeletons on display are from recently deceased whales. Just a random lookup -- the one in the London Natural History Museum is from 1891. Seems likely that when it was new it also leaked some oil?
- msds 2y agoMachine shops actually used whale oil until quite late. Much better than equivalent petroleum products until the '50s or later.
- ricardo81 2y agoIf it burns, it burns. I'd guess that's the prehistory of it. The scientific method was barely much older than whale oil usage as far as I can tell.
- lenkite 2y agoNice! A real life demonstration of the creation of fossil fuels.
- passwordoops 2y agoNo. In nature this oil would be degraded very quickly (eaten or oxidized). Read this for a basic primer on the formation of petroleum sources: https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/petroleum-resources/petroleum-formation/ https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/petroleum-resources/petrole...
- olliej 2y agoOh is this what people mean by big oil?
- lysace 2y agoSo in Göteborg, Sweden, there's an actual embalmed blue whale from the 1800s. I visited there as a kid in the 1980s. Had no idea it was unique, but apparently it's the only embalmed blue whale in the world. Wild. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/malm-whale https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/malm-whale (Got the "only one" bit by googling further for a long time.)
- bilsbie 2y agoI wonder how many gallons we saved from being released into the ocean?
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThat oil is food for worms that feed exclusively on whale bones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osedax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osedax
- gwbas1c 2y agoMany years ago I attended a wedding reception in the exact hall pictured in the article. It was a great party.
- nickhalfasleep 2y agoI was at a wedding dinner held under this a decade ago, and it they warned us it might drip on the meal.
- baueric 2y agoalso was at a wedding there and people daring others to smell the oil jar. apparently the smell is absolutely rancid
- coolcoder613 2y agoThere is a blue whale skeleton in my hometown, at the Melbourne Museum. https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/14968 https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/14968