Flensing
Videos
Flensing is the removing of the blubber or outer integument of whales, separating it from the animal's meat. Processing the blubber into whale oil was the key step that transformed a whale carcass int
Flensing at Whalers Bay, Deception Island
"Smeerenburg". A whale (left foreground) is being flensed. Painting by Cornelis de Man (1639).
Flensing at the Tyee Company whaling station at Murder Cove, Alaska
Mincing blubber
Muktuk
Videos
Muktuk is a traditional food of Inuit and other circumpolar peoples, consisting of whale skin and blubber. A part of Inuit cuisine, it is most often made from the bowhead whale, although the beluga an
Flensing
…the 21st century is both industrial and aboriginal. In aboriginal whaling the blubber is rarely rendered into oil, although it is regularly eaten as muktuk. English whalemen referred to the process as flensing, while American whalemen called it cutting-in or flinching…
Sliced and prepared muktuk
Canadian Inuit elders sharing muktuk, outside their summer tents, 2002
Expedition team of German photographer Ansgar Walk eating muktuk in celebration of a young hunter's catch in the Canadian Arctic, 1997