Un lungo pezzo di Giuliana Viglione uscito su BioGraphic racconta come durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale la caccia alle balene subì una pausa, permettendo alle popolazioni di balene di riprendersi temporaneamente.
Dopo la guerra, il generale Douglas MacArthur inviò navi giapponesi a cacciare balene per alleviare la crisi alimentare in Giappone e queste navi uccisero oltre 2.300 balene tra il 1946 e il 1948.
Fu Douglas MacArthur, il generale americano che fungeva da comandante supremo delle potenze alleate in Giappone dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, che inviò la Hashidate Maru e un’altra nave, la Nisshin Maru, entrambe navi militari giapponesi adattate, nelle acque piene di balene dell’Antartide.

On December 17, 1946, the Hashidate Maru butchered its first whale. It was a fin whale, the second-largest cetacean species on Earth. The carcass yielded over four metric tons of oil and more than 15 metric tons (33,000 pounds) of salted meat. Over the next 73 days, the ship processed a further 185 fin and 294 blue whales, returning home to Japan laden with over 3,000 metric tons of oil and almost 10,000 metric tons (22 million-plus pounds) of whale meat. It was Douglas MacArthur, the American general acting as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan after World War II, who sent the Hashidate Maru and another ship, the Nisshin Maru—both retrofitted Japanese military vessels—to Antarctica’s whale-filled waters.

I reperti raccolti durante queste spedizioni, i fanoni delle balene che si credeva erroneamente potessero indicare l’età degli animali, furono conservati in una collezione dimenticata allo Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History per oltre 60 anni.

Acting under instructions from A. Remington Kellogg, a premier whale expert and the curator of what was then called the United States National Museum, which was administered by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C, the ships’ crews also cut the two longest plates of baleen out of the mouth of each whale they killed. Whales without teeth—such as fin and blue—rely on these flexible plates made of keratin to filter feed from the sea. Baleen grows from a whale’s upper jaw downward, lined up like the slats of window blinds. Kellogg suspected that baleen was like tree rings and that by counting the layers on a plate, he could definitively determine the lifespans of the two species.

Il materiale ritenuto ormai inutile venne nascosto nei magazzini e lì rimase per più di 60 anni:

But when he received the plates—crates and crates of them, with some nearly a meter long—Kellogg realized his error. Baleen in adult whales erodes at the tips as it grows from the gums. So a single plate captures only a small fraction of the animal’s long life. Baleen records a roughly four-year period of life for fin whales and a six-year period for blue whales. Embarrassed by the amount of work expended for a collection he now believed was useless, Kellogg stashed the baleen away in the Smithsonian, where it sat, forgotten, for more than 60 years.

Fu John Ososky, uno specialista di collezioni presso lo Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, a ricostruire la provenienza di questa collezione.

Recentemente i ricercatori hanno analizzato i campioni di fanoni delle balene per misurare i livelli di ormoni. Queste ricerche hanno evidenziato un aumento significativo degli ormoni dello stress nel 1946, coincidente con la ripresa della caccia alle balene. Questo studio mette in luce l’impatto profondo delle attività umane sulle balene e l’importanza delle collezioni museali per la ricerca.

And as scientists continue to develop new techniques, the mysteries they can solve from baleen and other specimens will only increase. Remington Kellogg couldn’t have imagined the ways his baleen collection would offer insight into whales’ internal experience. We don’t yet know the questions that the collection could answer in the future.