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_Blubber_ and _flense_; _Moby Dick_; Vladimir Putin shooting a gray whale with a crossbow for “research purposes”; the forty-six rock carvings in South Korea dated 6000 BCE showing people hunting whales; the history of Basque whaling, which is…

Not _catching_ cetaceans, but _finding_ them, rounding a curve on the beach or looking down a cliff and beholding the whale on the strand, stranded. The serendipitous sighting of a dead whale by aventure, as they say in medieval romance, by chance.…

"In his _Life_ of the abbot Philibert of Jumièges (c. 608–684), Ermantarius of Noirmoutier recounts that the abbot had prayed for oil for lamps and that 'a monk came and announced that the sea had left a dead fish . . . on the shore; from its flesh…

"Māori traditionally treasured stranded whales for their jawbones, which were used for carving. When three sperm whales beached and died at Paekakariki in March 1996, Māori from the region removed the jawbones from two of the three. The third whale…

Humans aren’t the only ones who interact/intra-act with dead whales and their parts.

Whale fall is the term given to the complex ecosystem that develops when a dead whale body sinks to the sea floor at depths of 6600 feet or more. Whale falls are…

A dead cetacean not only provided food and fuel for medieval people, but bones and teeth could be fashioned into useful and decorative objects—even the ribs could be used as beams for houses.

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