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Story: Whaling

Cutting blubber

Image
Cutting blubber

This watercolour by Alfred John Cooper shows whalers hauling the blubber off a beached whale at Mōhaka Beach, which is 20 kilometres south-west of Wairoa. During the 1840s shore-based whaling spread up the east coast of the North and South islands, and continued fitfully in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne until the 1860s.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library

Reference: A-235-010

by Alfred John Cooper

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Jock Phillips, Whaling – Shore-based whaling, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/6256/cutting-blubber (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Jock Phillips, published 2 March 2009.