Although subsistence whaling by aboriginal peoples has been carried on for thousands of years, it is mainly within about the last thousand years that humans have pursued whales for commercial gain. The history of whaling may be divided into three periods: the historical whaling era, from 1000 A.D. to 1864-1871; the modern whaling era, from 1864-1871 to the 1970s; and the decline of whaling, from the 1970s to the present.

A dead whale being pulled on board a whaling vessel. (Greenpeace Photo. Reproduced by permission.)

The Basques of northern Spain were the earliest commercial whalers. Concentrating on the capture of right whales (Baleana glacialis), Basque whaling spread over most of the northern Pacific Ocean as local populations dwindled from overhunting. Like many whales that were later hunted to near extinction, the right whale was a slow-moving and coastal species.

Commercial whaling is considered to have begun when the...