Word: finback
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...whale in question was no Moby Dick (a monstrous albino sperm whale) but a finback measuring 44 ft. 2 in. and weighing an estimated 50 tons. It was no Moby Dick by temperament either: far from eluding pursuit, it seemed to seek out Dr. White. No fewer than five times it ran itself aground at Provincetown, virtually on Dr. White's Boston doorstep (though he was in Washington). Four times the U.S. Coast Guard hitched a 3-in. hawser to it and towed it out to sea, only to have it snap the line and return with a derisive...
...Whales & Glands "[He is] gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming as to defy all present pursuit from man," wrote Herman Melville of the finback whale. "This leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race." Captain Ahab and his men felt the same way, concentrated on other, slower beasts (notably the sperm whale, a species to which Moby Dick himself belonged). But today, with steam power and steel cables, the "unconquerable Cains" of the ocean, the fin and the blue whales,* are hunted vigorously-and among the most interested hunters is modern medicine...
...blue whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived-up to 100 It.. 150 tons. The finback reaches 80 ft. and 100 tons...