This part of a flensing tool was excavated from the Fyffe House property during recent trenching to lay a telephone cable.

Flensing tools were used to remove the skin and blubber from the carcass of a whale.  The whalers used the tool like a knife, to slice strips off the whale carcass.  Later, these strips of blubber were boiled to extract the highly sought after oil.

The coopers wing of Fyffe House is all that remains of Robert Fyfe’s Waiopuka Whaling Station, established in 1842.  When Robert died in 1854, his cousin George Fyffe, took over the whaling station and continued Robert’s farming activities until his death in 1867. 

This flensing tool has been dated to around 1870, which coincides with the time when whaling activities ceased on the property.

The whaling history of Kaikoura is deeply intertwined with the history of this property.  Initially, whaling provided a livelihood for the original occupants of Fyffe House; whale oil was a commodity often in high demand, as was at times baleen or ‘whale bone’, both of which could return good profits.

However whaling also provided building components in the form of the whale bones.  Fyffe House rests on whale bone piles, while this example shows a whale bone fence post.

This ear bone comes from a right whale, a species of whale from the Balaenidae family.

Right whales were hunted extensively in New Zealand waters during much of the 19^th century.  Their migratory route, along the east coast of the South Island, was where a number of shore-based whaling stations were established.  Right whales were large targets, and they float when they are dead, making the job of the whalers somewhat easier.

During the whaling season, the shore-based station in Waiopuka Bay [now known as Armers Beach] would have been a hive of activity.  Large pots, barrels, spears, scrappers and knives were amongst some of the objects used in the processing of whales.  The outside layers of fat (known as blubber) were removed by the whalers and boiled to extract the oil.  Placed in barrels or ‘casks’ oil was shipped to Europe where it was sold as lamp fuel, for making candles and cosmetics, put in foodstuffs and oiling machinery.  

Once the whales were ‘flensed’ or stripped of  blubber, the carcasses were towed to the end of Waiopuka Reef where over time they would decompose releasing a putrid stench known as the ‘smell of money’.  In a bay which was literally littered with whale bones, only occasionally today are bones uncovered or washed up by heavy storms, as was this part of an ear bone found in 2001.