If you don't know already....Whales amaze me. SO this story below amazes me. And makes me wish these massive mammals could talk. They probably hold all the secrets to the world.








Bowhead Whale Reveals Unlikely Treasure: 100-Year-Old Weapon
By Mitch Marconi
Jun 13, 2007

A Bowhead Whale that was harvested in a traditional 'subsistence hunt' conducted by an Alaskan Eskimo tribe, has revealed a great treasure.
A piece of a weapon used by commercial whalers in the late 1800s was found in the massive bowhead whale, which was caught off Alaska last month by the Inupiat.

The find dates not only the weapon, but the great beast as more than a century old.
The London Times Online reports that the tip of a bomb lance (thought to have been manufactured in the 1880s) shows that the 49ft whale, which weighed about 50 tons, might be nearly 130 years old.

"It was probably at least a yearling when it was struck, because the whalemen never took calves," said Craig George, an Alaskan wildlife biologist.

The find lends credence to recent evidence that bowhead whales have life spans that extend well past that of a century.

The bowhead whale, also known as Greenland Right Whales or Arctic Whales, was nearly wiped out by commercial whaling. Over recent times, the population off Alaska has gradually recovered since an international ban was imposed.

Indigenous people from Alaska, Greenland and the Chukotka region of eastern Russia and Greenland are allowed to hunt a fixed number of whales for traditional, non-commercial consumption. Alaskan Eskimos are permitted to harvest about 50 a year.