Sperm Whaling Grounds Added to HMAP Atlas

Sperm whaling grounds, as mapped and published in 2005 by John Bannister (et al.) in Oceans Past: Management Insights from the History of Marine Animal Populations, have been added to the HMAP atlas. These ground locations are based on many published descriptions by whalers and scientists, and broadly reflect charts or maps of whale catches originally published by Townsend (1935). The atlas shows the areas or regions where sperm whales were exploited by whalers 1760-1920.

To view these grounds, go to ‘browse’. You may select ‘Sperm’ from the species drop-down menu and click the submit button, or simply wait for all data to load on initial startup. (HMAP's data holdings are growing significantly so, depending on your connection, it may take up to 1 minute to load all data sets.)

The whaling grounds are represented by large rectangular areas. To view the complete record for an area, make sure that you click the icon in the center of the polygon, and then click ‘Main Form’ to view detailed descriptions. Registered users may add to or edit information contained within the existing entries.