“…Lords of the seas and oceans long before the human species appeared on this planet, cetaceans have been admired, feared, murdered, hunted, industrialized, and protected by humans. Brazilian historiography has been sensitive to whales, studying whaling stations 3 and the whaling industry (Castellucci, 2010; Comerlato, 2011; Duarte Filho, 2012; Edmundson and Hart, 2014), the protection of species in national parks (Losada and Drummond, 2015), and the efforts of public and private conservation organizations (Comerlato and Quiroz, 2019; Palazzo and Palazzo, 2011). This history reveals a tense, violent and at the same time delicate relationship between whales and humans, and between whalers and conservationists.…”