Each side of the huge upper jaw holds 300 or more plates of black baleen up to 10 or 11 feet long. Hairlike extensions of the plates strain out the tiny crustaceans upon which the bowhead survives. A large bowhead may yield as much as 275 barrels of oil, one-tenth of which may come from its tongue. Though the bowhead is no longer commercially valuable, other whales are being hunted in Antarctic waters. Whale oil is used as a lubricant, for cold-rolling and quenching of steel and for manufacturing soaps, cosmetics and detergents.
Whale meat is used as human and animal food.
The baleen is still used for corsets and bristles. Whale byproducts are used for fertilizer and for cattle and poultry feed. But even the Antarctic whales are disappearing. Each year it has been necessary to reduce the legal catch in international waters. In 1971 the U.S. ended licensed commercial hunting of whales.