{"id":2823,"date":"2026-08-19T16:24:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/century-old-weapon-hidden-in-whale-blubber-near-barrow-alaska\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T16:24:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:24:59","slug":"century-old-weapon-hidden-in-whale-blubber-near-barrow-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/century-old-weapon-hidden-in-whale-blubber-near-barrow-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"Century-Old Weapon Hidden in Whale Blubber Near Barrow, Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2007, Inupiat whalers in Alaska examined a 50-ton bowhead whale and discovered a fragment of explosive harpoon near its shoulder blade. The weapon dates from 1879 to 1885. This dating finally allows scientists to estimate the animal\u2019s age with precision.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A seemingly ordinary discovery, made during a subsistence hunt near Barrow<\/h2>\n<p>Indeed, it all began in the spring of 2007, during a <strong>subsistence hunt<\/strong> that local authorities supervise closely. On that day, Captain Arnold Brower Sr.\u2019s crew captured a male bowhead about 49 feet long, roughly 50 tons, near Barrow. The men then began to butcher it.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">A study reveals the \u201csecret double life\u201d of the Amazonian zombie fungus<\/span><\/section>\n<p>Specifically, in the fat near the shoulder blade, a <strong>fragment of rusted metal<\/strong> appears. Nothing extraordinary at first glance: the Inupiat crews often find old iron in the whales they hunt in the Arctic. Moreover, this practice goes back several generations.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How experts identified an explosive weapon dating back to 1885<\/h2>\n<p>What changes everything is the precision of the identification. The fragment rests in a bone, between the neck and the shoulder blade. In reality, it probably came from <strong>New Bedford<\/strong>, then the world capital of whaling. At the local museum, historian John Bockstoce compares it to his reference collection.<\/p>\n<p>His verdict is unequivocal. The piece matches a <strong>patent Ebenezer Pierce filed in 1879<\/strong>. Manufacturers produced this model only until 1885, before newer innovations replaced it. A window of barely six years.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">A spectacular cooperative hunting strategy documented among humpback whales<\/span><\/section>\n<p>The object is not a mere forged iron harpoon, but a <strong>mechanical weapon<\/strong>. It contains powder and explodes a few seconds after piercing the flesh. The experts then cross-check the patent and the vessel\u2019s voyage, from San Francisco to Alaska. They thus place the shot around 1890.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Small engraved notches, the signature of a hunter long dead<\/h2>\n<p>One detail intrigues researchers: six small <strong>engraved notches<\/strong> adorn the tip. In fact, they resemble a mark of ownership, that of an Indigenous Alaskan whaling captain. A hunter left this signature. Nothing is known about him, except that he missed his target more than a century ago.<\/p>\n<p>The irony does not escape the researchers. The <strong>descendants of this anonymous hunter<\/strong> could well belong to the same families who captured the whale in 2007. Unknowingly, they would have effectively completed a hunt their ancestors had begun more than a century earlier.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">Human presence alters the movement of pumas and even the way bears feed<\/span><\/section>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What this fragment reveals about the remarkable longevity of bowhead whales<\/h2>\n<p>Thanks to this tightly focused manufacturing window, researchers estimate the whale\u2019s age at between <strong>115 and 130 years<\/strong>. Additionally, Jeffrey Bada is conducting a study that goes even further: it places the animal\u2019s age at up to <strong>211 years<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the first time such a clue has fallen into scientists\u2019 hands. In 1980, hunters had already found a similar fragment near Saint Lawrence Island. Yet no one at the time grasped its significance: \u201cnobody had any idea of their lifespan,\u201d says a biologist.<\/p>\n<p>In short, the bowhead whale is among the rare species with <strong>negligible senescence<\/strong>. It can live more than 200 years, just behind the Greenland shark. Today, the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow displays the artifact.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">In times of drought, some plants save water thanks to a very particular kind of photosynthesis<\/span><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1224,2167,2166,2164,279,2165,354],"class_list":["post-2823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska","tag-barrow","tag-blubber","tag-centuryold","tag-hidden","tag-weapon","tag-whale","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2825,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions\/2825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}