"The Porpoise Factory"
"The Porpoise Factory" by Mary Helen Goodloe-Murphy
Restorers working at the Hatteras Weather Bureau have recovered copies of telegrams sent in 1913 and 1914.
National Park Service worker Joe McCarthy found the documents in a walled off china closet on Thursday, Jan. 9.
One document points to a historic porpoise fishery another to maintenance of the telegraph line running to the Weather Bureau located in the heart of Hatteras village. Some copies carry the letterhead of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Weather Service. Other documents are headlined with the Marconi Telegraph Company.
One reads: "Hatteras – Oct. 4, 1913 – TO: J.K. Nye Manteo, N.C. Caught one hundred and forty porpoises today, will meet you at mail boat W.H. Rollinson"
At that time, Joseph K. Nye, New Bedford, Mass., owed a porpoise factory in Hatteras village. William Harrison Rollinson managed the operation that caught coastal cruising porpoise in seine nets strung out from the beach.
The fishery is well documented. David Stick writes that "possibly the first instance of porpoise being taken commercially in the area was at Ocracoke Inlet in 1797 …” According to Stick in "The Outer Banks of North Carolina" the fishery operated regularly until the Civil War and resumed in the early 1880’s.
The Hatteras fishery participated in early scientific study of the porpoise. On Nov. 12, 1913, the five adult and five "half-grown" bottle-nosed porpoise or dolphin were captured and shipped live to the New York Aquarium.
In a book published in May, 1914, the aquarium’s director Charles Haskins Townsend writes "It is fascinating to have these lively rangers of the open ocean actually dwelling in our midst. They are the same ‘jolly porpoises’ that make high speed dashes under the bows of ships. No more popular exhibition of wild life has ever been made anywhere. After seven months in a circular pool thirty-seven feet in diameter and seven feet deep, they remain in good condition, feeding, leaping and otherwise disporting themselves after the manner of porpoises on the high seas."
It took three times for live dolphin to arrive in New York, 400 miles north from the place of capture. Townsend writes that while detailed instructions for shipping containers and care were sent, on the first two attempts the instructions were not followed.
In Nov. 1913, Townsend journeyed to Hatteras to oversee the shipment. Immediately, after the dolphin were captured in a drag-seine, writes Townsend, the porpoises were placed in a "deep salt water pond just back of the ocean beach" to recover for 24 hours. The following day the dolphin were placed in shipping tanks, hoisted aboard a schooner and covered with water. During the trip up Pamlico Sound and through the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, Townsend writes that "the water in the tanks was changed whenever it became warm." In Norfolk, Townsend connected with a New York bound steamer and used the steamer’s salt water hose to cool the porpoise tanks.
Townsend details his observations and feeding of the captured porpoises.
About the fishery, he writes "Cape Hatteras is the only point in North America where a porpoise fishery has ever been regularly conducted, and where such animals can be taken near the shore and beached with drag seines. The bottle-nosed porpoise winters off our South Atlantic coast and is quite common in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras during the fall, winter and spring months."
Commercially, the porpoise was valuable for jaw oil, hides and body blubber. In 1914 when Townsend’s book was published, a gallon of jaw oil sold for $20. This oil was "universally used for the lubrication of watches, clocks and similarly delicate mechanisms," writes Townsend.
Joseph K. Nye and William Harrison Rollinson, names on the telegraph copy found this year in the Hatteras Weather Bureau, provided Townsend statistics for the Hatteras porpoise fishery. In 1907, 70 dolphin were caught; 1908-591; 1909-1,550; 1910-1,278; 1911-826; 1912-467; 1913-400; 1914-1,073.
Townsend identified the bottle-nosed porpoise captured in Hatteras as tursiops truncatus, which is actually the bottle-nosed dolphin, a marine mammal. Dolphins bear live young which are nursed by the mother with milk, are warm-blooded, have lungs and breathe air. Dolphins identify size, density and speed of objects in the water through echolocation. Dolphin are between 8 and 12 feet long. Townsend’s adult dolphins were eight feet long. The marine mammal generally lives between 30 and 50 years.
The porpoise fishery of 100 years ago has long since ceased. Today, the bottle-nosed dolphin is protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the problem most frequently faced is entanglement in fishing gear.
Dr. Aleta Hone with National Marine Fisheries reports that along the coast from North Carolina north, the agency is seeing "entanglement that exceeds the sustainable level for the species."
*Written by Mary Helen Goodloe-Murphy, published 2003, The Coastland Times.
