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science · 19th century to 1986
No nation owned the whales of the open ocean, so no nation had to answer for hunting them toward extinction. It took a near-total industry collapse before an international body could agree to stop.
Facts drawn from NOAA Fisheries, the International Whaling Commission, and Encyclopaedia Britannica; interpretive framing is labeled as modeled analysis.
American whaling, centered in ports like Nantucket and New Bedford, boomed through the mid-19th century, supplying whale oil for lighting and industrial lubrication from a resource that belonged to no one until it was caught, a textbook open-access commons.
[VERIFIED] Industrial factory ships in the 20th century, especially after World War Two, dramatically increased catch efficiency, and several species, including blue whales, were hunted down to a small fraction of their historic population before any effective international limits existed.