After the slump of the thirties the whaling industry really took off, this was due to several factors, which included the development of the modern equipment and purpose built whale processing factory ships. With the Norwegians being at the forefront of these latest developments. Not only the Norwegians but also the British, Dutch, German, Russian and Japanese.

Nations were all actively involved in this lucrative business. Strangely the Americans who were the leading whalers during the old time whaling era, were not involved in the modern whaling. With several of the whaling companies realising that some from of control was required the formation of the International Whaling Commission came about. This was the start of a limited amount of control of the stocks that were taken from the world's oceans. The catches at his stage were becoming extremely large and according to records in the season of 1937/1938 around 46,000 whales were caught at this time, producing some 3,300,000 barrels of oil.