page_title: Flensing
section_title: Shore and bay whaling
hierarchical_section_title: Flensing / Modern / Shore and bay whaling
caption_attribution_description: English: Cheynes Beach Whaling Station in the early 1950s Source: http://www.whaleworld.org/About_Whale_World/Whaling_History/Cheynes_Beach_Whaling_Company/
context_page_description: Flensing is the removing of the blubber or outer integument of whales, separating it from the animal's meat. Processing the blubber into whale oil was the key step that transformed a whale carcass into a stable, transportable commodity. It was an important part of the history of whaling. The whaling that still continues in the 21st century is both industrial and aboriginal. In aboriginal the blubber is rarely rendered into oil, although it may be eaten as muktuk.
context_section_description: Flensing at stations in the early modern era (late nineteenth century) differed little from earlier methods. In Finnmark the whales were merely flensed at low-tide. Later mechanical winches and slipways were introduced. The whale was winched up the slipway onto a flensing plan, where men with long-handled knives shaped like hockey sticks would cut off long strips of blubber with the help of winches. As more and more of the carcass was utilized flensing became more specialized. Soon the entire whale was being used.
  At Grytviken, a whaling station at South Georgia, after the blubber had been stripped off the carcass by a group of flensers, a gang of three lemmers would pull it aside with the aid of steam winches and blocks to remove the meat and bone. Other men armed with steel hooks cut the meat into smaller pieces and fed them into meat cookers, while the bones were put into separate boilers.
caption: A humpback whale about to be flensed at the Cheynes Beach Whaling Station in the early 1950s
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