Whaling Industry Quotes

Right whales - so named because they were 'the right whale to kill' - grazed the waters off Nantucket as if they were seagoing cattle, straining the nutrient-rich surface of the ocean through the bushy plates of baleen in their perpetually grinning mouths.

Back in 1980, whale watching surpassed whaling as an industry. Now it's worth about four times as much. Whale watching provides far, far more jobs to people than whaling ever did. Whale watching has become an ally in the fight to end whaling.

If you live on Nantucket, you can't avoid its history, and 'Moby Dick' is the way most of us get into Nantucket's history.

Whales are killed today to supply the limited demand for whale meat or to be used in pet foods or as fodder for fur-bearing animals used in the fur trade.

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?

They [Japanese whalers] haven't produced a single peer-reviewed international scientific paper in 23 years.

Many, many of my paintings have come from the first chapter of Moby Dick.

It is of great importance to our country generally, and especially to our navigating and whaling interests, that the Pacific Coast and, indeed, the whole of our territory west of the Rocky Mountains, should speedily be filled up by a hardy and patriotic population.

The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.

The United States is the ultimate land of optimistic promise, but it also gave birth to quintessentially pessimistic tragedy: 'Moby-Dick.'

This isn't a hunt that's going to kill just four or five gray whales. The repercussions of this will have an effect on tens of thousands of whales that will be killed by the Japanese and Norwegians.

Whaling was the oil business of its day.

We commend President Obama and his administration for taking this strong action against Iceland and its barbaric whaling industry... and we urge the President to take similar action against Japan and Norway as well!

The only language that the Japanese whaling industry understands is economics.

By 1760, the Nantucketers had virtually exterminated the local whale population.

Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience.