A whaler is a person who hunts whales, or a ship designed for whale hunting. For most of human history, whalers hunted these enormous ocean mammals for their oil, meat, and baleen (the stiff, comb-like plates in some whales' mouths that were used to make everything from corset stays to buggy whips).

Whaling was dangerous, difficult work. Imagine rowing a small boat across choppy ocean waters to chase an animal the size of a school bus, then trying to harpoon it while waves crashed around you. Whalers might spend years at sea, sailing to remote parts of the ocean where whales gathered. The novel Moby-Dick tells the story of whalers pursuing a legendary white whale, capturing both the adventure and peril of this profession.

During the 1800s, whale oil lit lamps in homes and streets before electricity was widely available, making whaling a major industry. American whaling ships sailed from ports like Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts, bringing back valuable cargo. By the late 1900s, several whale species had been hunted nearly to extinction. Today, most countries have banned commercial whaling to protect these intelligent creatures, though a few nations still practice limited whaling.