That the United States was ever reliant on large-scale commercial whaling now seems absurd. Whaling hasn’t disappeared—the International Whaling Commission put a moratorium on the practice in 1982, but Norway, Iceland, and Japan all maintain small yet active commercial whale fisheries in defiance of the ban. Compared to the peak of American whaling in the 1850s, however, the modern industry is a barely noticeable blip, struggling to stay afloat amid multifront attacks from international regulators, animal rights groups, and general low demand for whale products (primarily the meat, usually eaten as a novelty). The total number of whales killed commercially in 2022 numbered in the high hundreds; in 1853, America alone slaughtered and processed over eight thousand.
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