This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. But please, call me Ishmael.

In the basement archives of the new Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, there's a lot that catches the eye.

This is a nice collection of mounted harpoons and lances.

Michael Dyer is the museum's curator of maritime history.

This particular harpoon is an early toggle type,

but once you plant this thing into the blubber of a sperm whale, it'll pop open like that and

lock into place under that blubber.

The shelves are lined with rusting harpoons and whale exploding bombs.

These weapons were used for killing whales quickly and efficiently.

The victims of those weapons are lying around too, parts of them at least.

That's reporter Daniel Ackerman.

What is this?

That's a novel tusk.

There's all kinds of strange stuff back here.

I don't even know what it is.

In the 1800s, whaling was a vast and brutal industry,

sometimes as deadly for the sailors involved

as it was for the whales.

And the global epicenter of whaling was just two blocks down from the museum on the

peers jutting out into New Bedford Harbor.

I mean you're talking 350 vessels in the mid-1850 were registered and sailed out

of New Bedford.

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