Inupiat whalers try out new ammunition

A supersonic explosive is replacing whaling-era black powder in the Alaskan bowhead hunt.

Penthrite, short for pentaerythritol tetranitrate, is usually used in blasting caps and easily detonates. In whaling, once the grenade penetrates the whale’s skin and explodes, the penthrite produces a concussion that fatally shocks the central nervous system.

“It’s a lot safer,” Eugene Brower, a Barrow whaling captain, who chairs the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission’s weapons improvement program, told the Anchorage Daily News.

Brower trains whaling captains to handle a harpoon-launched grenade loaded with penthrite.

“They love it,” Brower said of captains from the North Slope villages who now use the penthrite device for the spring and fall hunts. “It’s four times the strength of black powder. With black powder, the meat has a gas taste.”

Alaska’s whaling commission began researching new weaponry when the International Whaling Commission said more humane methods needed to be developed.

The IWC wanted to reduce the number of whales lost at sea after being hit by explosives and to decrease the time it took for a whale to die after being struck.

Alaska bowhead whales lived about 60 minutes after being hit with black-powder grenades; bowheads hit with penthrite grenades survive only about 15 minutes.

Penthrite grenades increase the chance that a whale will be pulled in safely.

About 30 of Alaska’s 160 whaling captains have completed a training and certification program in the use of the new grenades.

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