Extra: A Modern Whaler Speaks Up (Update)

0:28Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Also, there just aren't that many whalers around anymore. In the 1960s, at the peak of industrial whale hunting, thousands of whalers in more than a dozen countries were killing tens of thousands of whales a year. Today, commercial whaling happens in only three countries, Norway, Iceland, and Japan. And collectively, they only kill about a thousand whales a year. There just isn't much demand for whale meat, it turns out, and even less for whale oil. Anyway, we couldn't get a modern whaler to go on the record with us. But then, right as we were finishing our series, we landed our white whale, Bjorn Andersen, one of the biggest whalers in Norway.

1:08The Norwegian government allows for the harvest of 1 ,400 minka whales a year. The minka is plentiful. It's not at all an endangered species. Even so, Andersen and his fellow whalers usually take less than half of the allowed quota each year. Like I said, just not much demand for whale meat these days. When we caught up with Anderson back in 2023, he just finished his whaling season. In the conversation you're about to hear, he tells us why he loves hunting whales and how he does it, why harvesting whales is important to maintaining the supply of fish, and why he thinks that in the future there will be more whale hunting and not less.

1:48That's coming up on this bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio, starting now.

2:04This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

2:20Okay, Bjorn, it's Steven. You can hear me okay? Yes, I hear you. I'm sorry to interrupt your holiday. Yes, you're on holiday in Sweden? Yes, I am outside Söderhamn in the middle of Sweden. We have to go to my wife's home place. And what do you do when you're there on holiday? Cutting grass. Do you do any fishing? No, it's holiday. Now, where in Norway do you live? In Lofoten, in the westly part of Lofoten, on the water. We live on small islands. Is that where you grew up? Yes. Did you grow up in a fishing family? Yes, my father was a fisherman and a whale hunter. And can you tell me about your work now?

3:07You're mostly a fisherman, and then you whale during the whale season? In the 1st of January, we start fishing cod. When it comes to spring, April or something like that, we start minkeye whale hunting. And that goes on to the summer. After summer, we go to shipyard to repair and fix the boat. And in the autumn, we fish herring. So of the three things that you catch mostly, cod, whale and herring, which makes you the most money? It depends. Cod and herring are this year the best. How was your whale season this year? How many whales did you get? 111 whale. Wow. Holy cow. So you alone are responsible for like 25 % of all the whales taken in Norway this year, yeah?

4:00Yeah. So 111, how many trips was that? Four trips. Can you describe how you sell it then? Who do you sell it to? Well, it's a company I'm co-owner in, and then we distribute it to all the Norway, to the stores. We export some whales to Japan. One thing that confuses me is I read that the Norwegian quota for minkowail in a year is 1 ,000, but that all of you collectively, all the whalers, only take like 500 or 600 in a year. So why are you not getting up to the quota? Is it just not worth it? Are there not enough whalers? It's a problem to distribute and get it in the store everywhere, and people have to buy it.

4:50What about the price of whale meat over the past few years? It goes up, it goes down. Where is it? No, it's going up, but not in that speed we want. The price of whale meat has risen every year almost, but not enough. It's about one third or one fourth of our income. Does the government subsidize fishing and whaling? No. Not at all? No. Are there any price guarantees for the fish or the whale that you catch? Yes. All fisheries in Norway have a guarantee minimum price. It's regulated by law. Is it usually sold for more than that anyway? Yes. Yes, often it's over the minimum price. But the minimum price is useful to you just in case the prices fall, yeah?

5:42It's useful for everybody because you don't have those ups and downs. Everybody are jealous on our fishermen today because it has been quite good to be a fisherman in the last 20 years now because we have had quite good quotas and good money. So what would happen to you if Norway decided that they don't want to allow anyone to hunt whales anymore? If they do, they are crazy. Some years from now, there will be no cod or no herring to fish because there are so many whales. That's the food for the whale. Mickey whale is an opportunist. We eat even salmon and cod and herring and everything. If you hunt a whale, you can fish more fish because you have the balance in the ecosystem.

6:39Do you know how many minka whales there are in the world? The latest number is 150 ,000. In the world? Not in the world, in the North Atlantic. I saw a number, this was a few years ago, that said there were maybe half a million of Antarctic minka stocks. Does anyone talk about the minka whale as endangered at all? That must be people who don't know anything about the sea. Because if you are going to the coast of Norland and Troms and Finnmark, you can see minky whale and humpback and finn whale all the spring and summer and the autumn. If you number out how much minky whale eat, If there are 150 ,000 minky whales, it will be about 50 ,000 to 60 ,000 tons each day of fish.

7:35They have studied the numbers of how much the sea animal, including birds and everything, eats in a year. It's 25 million tons of food, and the fishermen only take 4 million tons. When you get the whale, you bring the whale on board the boat and you open up the stomach. What do you find in the stomach of a minko whale? Everything. It could be salmon, it could be cod, it could be herring. What does a modern-day whaler think of the Save the Whales movement? That's coming up. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

8:29okay i'm steven dubner let's get back to my conversation with bjorn anderson a norwegian fisherman and whale hunter so do you think the save the whales movement that started in the 1970s do you think it's gone too far that there are too many whales that are eating too much of the fish supply that people eat? Yes, it will come to that soon. So when someone says to you, Bjorn, I like whales. I don't want any whales to be killed. What do you say to them? No, I don't like to kill them. It's for food. A minky whale is very close related to a cow because the minky whale has poor stomach. So I cannot see any difference to kill a cow or kill a Mickey whale.

9:20The entire commercial whaling industry, Norway, Japan, Iceland, wherever, kills only about a thousand whales a year. But hundreds of thousands of whales are dying every year from plastic pollution and noise pollution and boat strikes and most of all from getting caught up in fishing gear. But it seems that most of the protest by environmental activists is directed at you, at the commercial whalers. Why do you think that is? It's a human's bad conscience due to environmental stuff. Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Yes. Do you think of yourself as a conservationist? Yes, I think it's common sense.

10:04If you harvest the nature, you have to make sure that there are growing up things to hunt or to harvest next year. So what do you say to someone who thinks that they are being a perfect moral person, right? And says that no one should ever kill whales. Get some understanding of the nature. It's simple like that. They don't understand the nature. They leave more on Walt Disney or something like that. I have not so much to say about that because I'm just fed up with them. They are so wrong in many, many places. Stop the plastic pollution we have now. They should have worked for stopping plastic pollution many, many years ago.

10:58And even petrol, the global warming is also a big issue. We don't know what's happening in the years to come. They should have done more work on those issues. It's really become a problem for us. Minky whale or whale hunting is not a problem. It was a problem for the whale many years ago. Now it's no problem with the whale stock. Do you think the International Whaling Commission did a good job years ago when they tried to regulate the number of whales that could be killed? They didn't do their job. Why not? They are an organization based on the scientific committee. And the scientific committee said there was enough minkeewhale.

11:47So they should have given out quota on minkeewhale. But they didn't. So what would happen if everyone in the world were allowed to hunt minkowale starting next year? Would that be a problem for the minkowale population? Of course. You have to do a regulation, you have to count them, you have to give out quota and do it sustainable. I've read that whalers wanted the fisheries ministry in Norway to promote whaling and whale meat, but that it didn't work, that they were worried that trading partners would get upset. Do you know anything about that? Yes, I was one of those who wanted him to respond on that, but he didn't.

12:33Have you ever been to the U.S., Bjorn? Yes. Where did you go? New York. Yeah, that's where I am. Did you like New York? Uh, yes, because I study engineering, high power electricity engineering. So we was visiting Con Edison in New York. And you were working as an engineer then? Yes. Who did you work for? Norsk Hydro. It was a power plant, yes. We produced about 3 % of Norwegian electricity. So why did you stop working as an engineer and become a full-time fisherman? It's a much better way of life. You are free and you are out. You can see the nature, you can see whales, you can see other fish, and you can feel the weather, bad weather or good weather, in a much better way than you do in an office.

13:31When you came to New York, did you go into the rural areas at all or just the city? No, we were just in New York. Okay. So if you had gone upstate into New York, you would see a lot of deer. And in the U.S., some species of deer are considered a nuisance animal for a lot of reasons. They eat crops. They spread disease. They cause car crashes. And so hunting of deer is encouraged. There's a season and there's a limit. Do you see the minka whale as sort of a nuisance animal like that? No, it's a source of food. But you have to try to balance the ecosystem as good as you can, because then it will produce the most.

14:15We have to harvest our resources in a sensible way. If we don't shoot whale, the ecosystem will collapse sooner or later. After the break, how exactly does Bjorn Andersen harvest those resources? You have to think like a whale. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

14:47Welcome back. I'm speaking with Bjorn Andersson, a Norwegian fisherman and whale hunter. Tell me about your ship. How big is the ship? What's it called? The boat is called Reinebuen and it's a 32 meter long steel boat. And the name of the boat, Reinebuen, what does that mean? My father was grown up on Reine. It's a place in Lofoten. Reinebuen, it's like a man who lived on that place. Did you grow up wanting to be a whaler when you were a kid? Yes, I was five years, first time I saw a whale was shot. It was very excited. Why did you get talked into becoming an engineer then? They were stopped in the whale hunting.

15:36So I didn't know what to do. This was in 1986 when the International Whaling Commission put a moratorium on commercial whaling. But in 1992, Norway announced it would resume hunting minko whales in defiance of that ban. Andersen, who was by then working as an engineer for a power company, was able to get back to his first love. I think that was a very good decision because the culture and the know-how is starting to disappear. And it could be very hard for the coastal people here in Norway. Do you have kids, Bjorn? No. Do you have young crew members that are going to become like you, a whaling boat captain?

16:26Yes. They just finished school and they started to onboard a ship and learn to catch whale or fish. Some are good or some are bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're good? Yes. My father, he learned me everything. You have to have a good interest in what you're doing. And it's whatever you do. If you don't have the interest, you will be not so good. What about the crew size on your boat? We are six people all year. They work for you year-round, the same six? Yeah. Do they live in your town? Nearby. What's the longest you've ever gone from land then? Two, three, four weeks. We have been on the north side of Spitsbergen, almost 81 degrees north.

17:15When you're out on the water, can you describe how you locate the minka whale? We only use our eyes. Wow. No sonar, nothing like that? No, nothing. It's the best equipment we have. Okay. So what are you looking for? Looking for the whale. You're not looking for birds or a spout? The birds as well, they often give away where the whales are. So we know to use holy nature. And how often does the minkowail breach? It's three to five minutes, and then they come up and blow three times. Yes. We try to get close to the whale and try to think out where it's possible. Where the whale go, you have to think like a whale.

18:14It's like a chess player. You have to think some step forward. It's a hunt. You have to get close to it because we don't shoot long distances. It's just a 30 or 40 meters, something like that, or closer. And describe the harpoon. The harpoon is 70 millimeter, but the barrel on the cannon is 60 millimeter. So it's a big hole where the harpoon hits the whale. In the front of the harpoon, we have, of course, the granite. We explode inside a whale. So how fast does that kill the whale then? It's instant. If you don't kill it, maybe make it unconscious. And then we kill it with a rifle. And what kind of rifle do you use for that?

19:04It's an American rifle. 375 Remington. Just so I'm clear, the grenade that's at the end of the harpoon. In the front of the harpoon. Where do you aim on the whale? For the head, the heart? In the chest. and then if it doesn't succeed in killing the whale, then you kill it with the rifle, yes? Yeah. And then how do you get it on the boat? We have a strong wire we put on the tail and then we pull it up on the deck with a winch. And how big are they? It could be up to 10 meters. What does it weigh? 15 ,000, 20 ,000 pounds? I don't know about pounds. It's up to eight, nine ton. So you get it on the boat with the winch.

19:54What happens now? Who butchers it and so on? Oh, it's the crew cutting out the blubber and the meat, and then we put the bone back to the sea. What do you do with the blubber? We give it to the birds. Okay, so the oil is not worth anything. Not for now. It's a very healthy oil. We haven't managed to get any good system for taking the oil. Do they travel solo or in groups? Both. But very often, the minkie whale is a lonesome cowboy. They travel individually. But when they come to places where there are a lot of food, there could be very many. Does the minkie whale ever try to attack the boat? No.

20:43Some whales do, yeah? No. No. It's more like accidents. You know, you have some YouTube clip where a humpback guy jump up and fall down on a sailing boat or something like that. But I don't think he's attack. It's just an accident. Yeah, I see. Have you read Moby Dick? No, I'm not a reader. When you see a whale breach, how can you tell if it's a minko whale or maybe some other kind of whale? It's like to see the difference on a horse and a pig. Maybe you can mix them up if you are from New York or something like that, but not a crew on the whale boat. Do you ever hear the whales communicating or singing?

21:35You could sometimes. You can hear the white whales and sometimes humpback. If Norway were to allow the hunting of other species of whale, which ones would you want to hunt? I have enough with minky whale because we have to have bigger boats and other equipment to hunt bigger whales. We spoke with someone in Japan who said that one reason that some whalers there still hunt whales is because the world tells them they can't. And I'm curious if that's the same for you in Norway. That's stupid. Yes, that's stupid. I already said that you have to harvest in a sustainable way. It's stupid. Bjorn, we've been working on this series about the history and economics of whaling for about six months.

22:30And you are the first whaler who agreed to speak with us. Why do you think that whalers are so reluctant to speak about whaling? Oh, I have had a lot of journalists on board a ship. And there are many bad journalists who only want to have the big scoop, you know, want us to say something they could put together so they could make a scoop or something like that. A lot of journalists are very bad. That's a pity. When I watch the news, I have a big question signs. Is this true or not? Because I've experienced many bad journalists, but also Oh, some good. I think people, the whalers are fed up with bad journalists who only want to have a scoop.

23:32And when you say they want a scoop, what does that mean? It means they want to make you look bad? It means they want to make you look like you don't have morals? Yeah, something like that. Do you think whaling will still exist in Norway in 10 years? Yes. What about 50 years? Then it will be more. It has to be. You say it has to be to protect the fish stock, you say? Yes. And to produce food enough for the people on the planet. Is there anything we didn't talk about that we should? Is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have or anything you just want to tell me about? No. No, it's enough?

24:11You've had enough of me? Yes. I hope people in the United States will understand that to hunt an animal, it's not a nice thing to do, but it's necessary. It's good food. It's not nice to see a cow being killed, not even a chicken. You never get allowed to see that. The minke whale have a nice free life before he meet me. Then it's over. All right, Bjorn, thank you very much. I appreciate your talking to us and I enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you.

24:59And thanks to you for listening to this conversation with the Norwegian whaler Bjorn Andersen. If you want to learn more about the modern whaling industry, I recommend you listen to part two of our whaling series. It's called Why Do People Still Hunt Whales? And while you're at it, you can listen to episodes one and three also. We will be back soon with another episode of Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too.

25:29Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Zach Lipinski. It was mixed by Greg Rippin with help from Jeremy Johnston. The Freakonomics Radio network staff also includes Alina Cullman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Morgan Levy, Jasmine Klinger, Sarah Lilly, and Tao Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by The Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening.

26:10How many times a week or a month do you eat whale, would you say? One or two times in the week. We have chopped whale meat, we have taco, pizza, everything. Do you ever eat it raw? Yeah, yeah. Tartar. It's very good.