And just as importantly, oil saved the menhaden.*
From OilPrice, November 22:
If it weren’t for the discovery of crude oil, whales would have been hunted to extinction for blubber. We’ve all heard the argument, and it makes sense from this perspective: For a time, whale fat was the dominant fuel for lamps and material for candles because it was less smelly than tallow and created less smoke. Then, kerosene came on the scene and rendered whale fat obsolete. One point for the oil industry and one point for the whales.
However, reality is rarely linear or black and white.
And in this case, the dueling realities both contain elements of truth regarding the contribution of the oil industry to the preservation of whales, some species of which were hunted to near extinction in the 19th Century.
The purveyors of each reality think only in partisan thoughts and of oil only in terms of good versus evil, never a gray moment between.
The Good Oil Argument
The 19th century in America was the century of the whale. The cetaceans were a source of oil for lighting but also oil that was used as lubricant in trains. Whale oil was also used for heating, for soap, and for paints and varnishes. It was a truly versatile raw material.
To satisfy the booming demand for whale oil, a whaling industry grew and thrived. According to records, the whaling fleet in America totaled 392 vessels in 1833 and this expanded to 735 vessels by 1846. These whaling ships accounted for 80 percent of the world’s whaling fleet.
The annual output of sperm oil (rendered fat from the nose of the sperm whale that made the best candles) averaged 4-5 million gallons with another 6-10 million gallons of “train oil” also produced on an annual basis. America wanted whale oil and the industry provided it. Until the 1850s.*See October 2015's "Munnawhatteaug: The Fish That Built America":
From 735 whaling ships in 1846, the American fleet went down to just 39 by 1876. The reason had a name and this name was kerosene. A Canadian geologist named Abraham Gesner discovered in the 1840s a way to make kerosene, which was much cheaper than other lighting fuels available at the time. It was easy and quick to produce. At the time, kerosene was derived from coal.
Just a decade later, in 1859, the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania, marking the beginning of the oil industry. The man who many credit with the saving of the whales almost singlehandedly was John D. Rockefeller, who accurately noted there was too much money being spent on pumping oil out of the ground and not enough on processing it.
Rockefeller started with several kerosene refineries that later evolved into Standard Oil, and soon, the growing population of the United States had access to cheap kerosene, and demand for whale oil dropped and eventually vanished. Just as well, since by that time, several whale species were already under threat of extinction from overhunting.
The Bad Oil Argument
Yes, the rise of oil-derived kerosene and the start of the demise of the whaling industry in the United States more or less coincided, but there was no strong causal link between the two. The avoidance of whale species extinction was simply the result of a favorable combination of factors....MORE
Alternate title: "How Samuel Martin Kier saved the sperm whale by inventing the process to refine crude into lamp oil".After that went up I was told "fish oil was actually much more important than whale oil" and that I should post something on menhaden.
or not.
So here it is.
From Southern Fried Science:
Six reasons why Menhaden are the greatest fish we ever fished.
Menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus, is, without a doubt, the single most important fish in the western Atlantic. This oily filter-feeder swims in schools so large that they block the sun from penetrating the water’s surface as it regulates ocean health. Earlier this week, we were greeted by news that menhaden stocks were rebounded, yet despite their near-universal importance in the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, most Americans have near heard of a menhaden.
Let’s fix that. Here are six reasons you should know what a menhaden is.
1. Menhaden go by many names.
The Narragansett called them munnawhatteaug. Colonists called them poghaden, bony-fish, whitefish, pogy, mossbunker, fat-bat. Perhaps most endearingly, menhaden were called bug-heads, thanks to the parasitic isopod that was often found in place of their tongues. They have also been called “the most important fish in the sea“.
No matter what you call them, Atlantic menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus, is the little morning tyrant, and they are magnificent.
2. The United States of America grew on the backs of menhaden.
The Narragansett word for menhaden, munnawhatteaug, translates as “that which fertilizes”. In the legend of Plymouth Colony, a local tribe taught those first settlers to plant a fish with their corn to make it grow stronger. That fish was a menhaden. For most of the history of the menhaden fishery, oil and fertilizer were the fish’s primary uses.
3. Menhaden are bigger than whales.
You could be forgiven if you thought that the American industrial revolution was powered by whale oil. The glossy lubricant was used primarily for lighting in pre-industrial America. By the time Herman Melville published Moby Dick, the golden age of whaling was already in decline. The Civil War was its death blow. Out of that conflict came the industrial menhaden industry. Seeing the vast wealth of the Chesapeake Bay, Northern industrialists headed south to exploit these rich, dense fish. Whale ships were converted and the mighty purse seine made its first appearance.
By 1880, half a billion menhaden were being rendered into oil and fertilizer. There were almost three times as many menhaden ships as whaling ship. A menhaden boat could produce more oil in a week than a whaling ship could during it’s entire, multi-year voyage, and it could do so close to shore and out of harms way....MORESo there you go.
However, when asked to put on my academic hat, I will still use whale oil/crude oil as a classic case of commodity substitution and the mighty leviathan's product as only the second example of resource (near) exhaustion, next to guano.
Speaking of which, have you ever heard the story of NYSE listed New York Guano?
Related: "Sexy Clothes and Dim Lights ca. 1900".
