W00211

 

 

Factory ship at South Georgia, heap of whale bones in foreground. (However, may be Admiralty Bay, South Shetland.) Whales were very heavily hunted around Antarctica from the 1900s. By the 1960s there were no longer enough whales left for the business to be profitable anymore. It was on factory ships just like this one that whale carcasses were reduced to oil, meat and bone meal. These were later made into sellable products like fertiliser, stock cubes and margarine. The whaling season lasted for December to March, the height of the Antarctic summer. A few days after arriving the ships headed for the ice and wouldn't return until four months later. Sometimes they went all around the Antarctic Continent. This picture seems to be from Factory Bay, Deception Island, SSI

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