Whales & Whaling

On a cold day in January 2004 a 33.5' male sperm whale beached himself at Cape Lookout in North Carolina.  A necroposy (animal autopsy) revealed no obvious signs of trauma.  No cause of death was determined.  Staff and volunteers buried the whale with the plan of exhuming the relatively clean bones after several years and preparing them for display at the North Carolina Maritime Museum.  This project came to be known as Bonehenge. 

After eight years of hard work by both staff and volunteers the 33.5' sperm whale skeleton will be hung in the North Carolina Maritime Museum this February with the accompanying exhibit opening in June.

Please visit the website www.bonehenge.org to learn more about the project of recovering, rearticulating and preparing a 33.5' for display. 

Whales & Whaling General Information 

Information Compiled by: North Carolina Maritime Museum Education Staff

-All whales belong to a group (or Order) known as Cetaceans (she TAY shuhnz). There are two types of Cetaceans- toothed (odontocete) and baleen (mysticete). Baleen is a special filter that some whales use to sieve tiny food particles and animals from the water.

-Today there are 78 species of whales swimming in the oceans around the world; 67 species are toothed and 11 are baleen. Visitors to North Carolina’s Outer Banks have the chance to see whales like the bottlenose dolphin, sperm whale, right whale and humpback whale depending on the season.

-Whales are large, intelligent marine mammals. They breathe air through a blowhole into lungs, are warm-blooded and give birth to their young as opposed to laying eggs.

-Several species of whales were hunted close to extinction. Most population have not yet recovered from the intense hunting and still face threats to their survival from human activities.

-Two serious threats to several species of Cetaceans are being hit by ships and tangled in fishing gear.

-North Carolina’s whaling industry lasted for over 200 years (1700s to 1916).

-North Carolina’s whaling industry initially relied on “drift” whales that washed ashore or became stranded; later on whalers would begin to harpoon the whales.

-Shore-based whaling activities seem to have extended as far north as Cape Hatteras and southward to Little River, though most whale catching was centered at the Beaufort area.

-The Outer Banks shore whalers were in the habit of giving names to the Right Whales they caught(Ex: Mayflower, Little Children).

-The last whale reportedly captured on the North Carolina coast was killed on March 16, 1916.

Additional Reading

Young Readers

Suzanne Tate Katie W. Whale: A Whale of a Tale

Suzanne Tate Danny & Daisy: A Tale of a Dolphin Duo

Julia Vogel Our Wild World: Dolphins

Students and Adults

Bonehenge: The Creation of a Skeletal Display from a Stranded Sperm Whale www.bonehenge.org

Jenny McElroy March 1916 -- The End of North Carolina Whaling http://bonehenge.org/WhalingInNC.aspx

William F. Perrin, Bernd Wursig and J. G.M. Thewissen (2008) Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, Second Edition

Nathaniel Philbrick (2001) In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

Randall R. Reeves and Edward Mitchell (1988) NOAA Technical Report History of Whaling In and Near North Carolina

John E. Reynolds, Samantha D. Eide and Randall S. Wells (Sep 3, 2000) The Bottlenose Dolphin: Biology and Conservation

Marcus B. Simpson, Jr., and Sallie W. Simpson Whaling on the North Carolina Coast

Hal Whitehead (2003) Sperm Whales: social evolution in the ocean