Immortals Of The Arctic: The Bowhead Whale | Real Wild Channel

Absolutely amazing!!! Loved this & seeing the old cultures & new research coming together to discover more about some of the most majestic creatures on earth!!!

Humans be like: wow theres this legendary pokemon in our ocean, lets kill it.

Interesting and valuable research the Whale Biologist have done and a good look into how the Native peoples still want to keep alive their heritage and traditions. Well narrated and high film quality make this video enjoyable to watch.

Whaling in the traditional way is actually about way more than just tossing harpoons into the whale's body. Because the harpoons themselves don't really do all that much harm to the animal, but what the Hapoons DO do is attach the animal itself to the boat which it will drag behind it as it tries to flee. The boat will slow the whale down until it is too exhausted to go on. It is then that the Harpooner brings out a lance, a harpoon with a wide flat blade, which he will stick in the whale and pull out again before repeating the process a couple of times. The object here is to sever the whale's main arteries which is what actually kills the whale. Of course all of that means getting very close to a wounded and angry animal which WILL strike out at you. Which brings us to the reason why the whalers cut the flukes off after the whale is killed, the whale's tail is a powerful weapon and by cutting the flukes off, they basically diffused the bomb. The Bowhead and its close relative the Right whale (Called that way because they were the "Right whale" to hunt) are slow swimmers and float when killed. So when commercial whaling wiped both species almost completely out, the whalers began to hunt the Gray Whale and found out to their horror that that species didn't go down without a good fight. They would actually launch themselves out of the water onto the boats and many sailor didn't come home after meeting the "Devil fish"

The baleen whales are the most massive animals, it's surprising that they don't seem to fight back when humans attack them.

Just like humans can remember roads, regular routine paths, whales have ability to learn waterways when They are babies. As cities develop, and we remember our childhood places without GPS in the same have they have same tendencies

Modern science has mapped the Bowheads genome and they say its possible they can live up to 268 years. This means that a whale born in 1775 before the signing of the Declaration of Independence could still be alive today. That is amazing.

Glad I found this

"simple cleaning job particular calcium of Louisville" @6:17 Subtitles on 😂

Wow! (Wonder where the polar bears and foxes were during the butchering...! There must have been a sentry posted somewhere, dontcha think?!)

What's the name of the traditional tool used at 17:55 which allows for listening to the whales underwater?

175 yrs old or more! 211yrs!

this is not about the Bowhead Whale its abut hunting the Bowhead Whale. :(

I hate how people are like "Ughhh inuits are such ass holes" I've 2 things to say. It wasn't the inuits who decimated whale populations, it was Americans, English, Norwegians and Japanese. It was commercial whaling not the tribes hunting massive whales in polar waters using little skin boats, spears and harpoons. And also clearly ye have never had to depend on nature for food. If you had you'd realise you only take what you need to survive

A documentary with very little footage of the actual animal. Just lots of talking about it. Kinda like watching a documentary on Bigfoot!

Anyone in this comment section complaining about the whales being hunted is a HYPOCRITE if you are not vegan. This isn't just culture. This is eating to survive. You come from a privileged place telling them to just eat something else, when you can just go get your food from a grocery store.

Someone has the contact of the sound researcher. Mia?

Couldnt that ancient weapon just be something recent hunters used ?

music in this?

I have massive respect for the Inuit people. Here in Ireland we hunted the North Atlantic Right whale / Ceartmhíol mór an tuaiscirt or just Ceartmhíol mór like the Inuk hunt the Bowhead whale. Now before you all attack me this was before commercial whaling when there were thousands of them. And one whale would last and island or coastal community weeks or months even. Thus was until the Companies came in and decimated the population to where these beautiful animals that kept hundreds upon thousands of people alive were verner all killed off. They destroyed the sustainable system of Right hunting in Ireland Now Ireland is one of the driving forces in Northern Right whale conservation