Whales are the largest mammals on our planet, with the blue whale being the biggest animal to have lived in our 4 billion year history of the earth. Whales are referred to as Cetaceans and comes from the Greek word ketos meaning whale or sea monster. There are two sub orders of Cetaceans the baleen whales or Mysticeti and the toothed whales or Odontoceti. Further to this the baleen whales can be further divided into rorquals, right whales, gray whales and pygmy right whales. With the toothed whales they can be further divided into sperm, beaked, narwhal and beluga whales and also dolphins and porpoises.

Whales have been hunted for many centuries with the advent of the 90mm cannon and highly mechanised whale catchers and factory ships the whales that were most viable to catch were blue, fin, humpback and sperm whales. The processing of the blue whale take up to thirty minutes and for the smaller species of whale it generally took the same amount of time but produced a sixth of the yield. Since the formation of the international whaling commission catches were strictly regulated and each factory ship had a inspector on board appointed by the IWC. The inspector monitored the species, size, gender and if a lactating whale was shot the company who shot the lactating whale would be fined for this misdemeanour. Each day each factory ship radioed the IWC to advise them how many whales they had caught.