Whale 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

Whale 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.