One that got away . . . whale caught after 120-year hunt
ESKIMOS who caught a bowhead whale off Alaska have found a harpoon fragment lodged in its blubber that shows the 45-tonne mammal survived a similar hunt more than a century ago.
Experts got a rare insight into the age of one of the world's longest-living species when they identified the five-and-a-half-inch (13cm) projectile embedded in the whale's neck as part of a bomb lance in use around 1890.
"It's pretty exciting," said John Bockstoce, a curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.
Scientists normally estimate a whale's age by chemical analysis of its eye lenses, which become cloudy as they age.
It is rare to find one aged over a century, but experts say that the oldest whale can be close to 200 years old.
The harpoon fragment was found after the crew of Captain Arnold Brower used chainsaws to cut open a large bowhead whale they caught off Barrow on May 16.
It has been identified as the head of a bomb lance manufactured in the Massachusetts whaling centre of New Bedford between 1879 and 1885.
Generally fired from a heavy shoulder gun, the small metal cylinder was filled with explosives and equipped with a time-delay fuse so it would explode seconds after it was shot into the whale. The bomb lance was meant to kill the whale immediately and prevent it from escaping.
(©The Times, London)
