There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written

I love being startled by fresh insights. I knew whales were long lived but I did not realize quite how long. And then the implications from that agedness.

There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written by Rose Eveleth

Bowheads seem to be recovering from the harvest of Yankee commercial whaling from 1848 to 1915, which wiped out all but 1,000 or so animals. Because the creatures can live longer than 200 years — a fact George discovered when he found an old stone harpoon point in a whale — some of the bowheads alive today may have themselves dodged the barbed steel points of the Yankee whalers.

Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick in 1851, after a brief stint on a whaling ship.