Whale Hunt Folk Heritage

The cultural legacy of traditional whaling communities, from the American sperm-whale fishery centered on Nantucket and New Bedford in the 19th century to the Indonesian village of Lamalera on Lembata, where hunters still take sperm whales from open boats (peledang) with hand-thrown harpoons. Lamalera’s hunt is recognized as subsistence and is excluded from the International Whaling Commission’s commercial moratorium of 1982 (effective 1986). The heritage spans the songs, boatbuilding, ceremony, and division-of-catch customs that organized these hunts.