Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 141, September 2016, pp. 1-19. | Page 6

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weighs more than 100 tonnes. The largest recorded female weighed 190 tonnes
(equaling the mass of 90 elephants), making it the largest animal that ever lived
on earth. Even a newborn calf is 7 meters long and weighs 2500 kilos. It needs
190 liters of nutritious milk a day and gains 600 kg of weight every week. The
adults eat up to 4000 kg of shrimp-like krill per day. They live solitary or in pairs,
probably because they need large areas to feed in. They have been the target of
relentless hunts by whalers. Over 1200 of these miraculous animals were killed
by Russian whalers in the Gulf of Oman alone between 1963 and 1966. During
this same period 849 Bryde's whales, 242 Humpback whales and 954 Sperm
whales fell prey to factory whaling in Omani waters. Only around 5000 - 10.000
individuals of the Blue whale remain in the entire world (Jongbloed, 2004).

Whale Jaw at the Diving Village, Heritage Village, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photo
by: Prof. Dr. Norman Ali Khalaf-von Jaffa. 19.03.2015.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50022881@N00/16766070669/
The whaling industry that has been much reduced in recent years by whaling
bans, used to thrive in past centuries. Whales were hunted mainly for the oil
made from the fatty layer beneath their outer skin. It was known as the "liquid
gold" of the whaling industry. In earlier centuries it was used to light lamps and
more recently it has been used in the manufacture of soap, lipstick, cooking fats,
ice cream, machine lubricants and even the glycerine for explosives. The baleen
plates, also called whalebone, were used for whip handles, shoe horns, fans and
many other unlikely products such as whalebone corsets! Whale meat was never
very popular in the West, but is a delicacy in Japan even now. Whale skin was
used to make bootlaces, bicycle saddles, handbags and shoes. The blood was
used in fertilizers and adhesives. Even the tendons were used in tennis rackets,
while the connective tissue yielded gelatin for use in sweets and photographic
film. A special product was ambergris, known as whale gold. It is formed in the
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 141 – September 2016