Blue Whale with 3-Ton Tongue Butchered by 80 Men: Lewis Lapham

In 1948, a Japanese whaling fleet with 1,300 men set off for the Antarctic. There was an oil tanker, storage and processing ships and a 10,000 ton factory, the Hashidate Maru. Arriving, they quickly killed their first whale, a gigantic blue, one of the largest ever caught.

The animal’s tongue alone weighed three tons, and its heart was as big as a Volkswagen. Butchering the 300,000-pound carcass took 80 men four hours. And then they went out for more, using sonar, exploding harpoons and other high-tech killing devices. An efficient factory fleet was capable of taking as many as 70 whales in a day.