
Compañía Argentina de Pesca was initiated by the British-Norwegian whaler and Antarctic explorer Carl A. Larsen, and established on 29 February 1904 by three foreign residents of Buenos Aires: the Norwegian consul P. Christophersen, H.H. Schlieper, and E. Tornquist. Larsen was the company's Manager, in which capacity he organized the building of Grytviken, the first land-based whaling station in Antarctica put into operation on 24 December 1904.

The Dundee Whaling Expedition (1892–1893) was a commercial voyage from Scotland to Antarctica.

Viktor Esbensen was a Norwegian mariner known for exploring the Antarctic region together with his father-in-law Carl Anton Larsen, looking to make a living from whaling. He was killed when his ship was sunk in World War II.

The history of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands is relatively recent. When European explorers discovered the islands, they were uninhabited, and their hostile climate, mountainous terrain, and remoteness made subsequent settlement difficult. Due to these conditions, human activity in the islands has largely consisted of sealing, whaling, and scientific surveys and research, interrupted by World War II and the Falklands War.

Carl Anton Larsen was a Norwegian Antarctic explorer, who made important contributions to the exploration of Antarctica, the most significant being the first discovery of fossils, for which he received the Back Grant from the Royal Geographical Society. In December 1893 he became the first person to ski in Antarctica on the Larsen Ice Shelf which was subsequently named after him. Larsen is considered the founder of the Antarctic whaling industry and the settlement at Grytviken on the British-administered island of South Georgia. In 1910, after some years' residence on South Georgia, he took British citizenship. The Norwegian whale factory ship C.A. Larsen was named after him.

A lemmer is the person who dismembers a whale separating the meat, flippers, and bones in the butchering process after it has been stripped of blubber by a flenser. The lemmer removes the meat from the bones so it can be boiled to remove the whale oil. The word lemmer is from the Norwegian language word lemme, meaning dismember. On boats, the lemmer men separated the meat from the bones on the lemmer deck where the carcass was pulled.

The South Georgia Museum is situated in Grytviken, near the administrative centre of the UK overseas territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Polar explorers Ernest Shackleton and Frank Wild are buried in Grytviken's graveyard. The museum was established in 1991 by Nigel Bonner.

Whale Wars is a weekly American documentary-style reality television series that premiered on November 7, 2008 on the Animal Planet cable channel. The program followed Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, as he and the crew aboard their various vessels attempted to stop the killing of whales by Japanese vessels (whalers) off the coast of Antarctica.

Japanese whaling, in terms of active hunting of whales, is estimated by the Japan Whaling Association to have begun around the 12th century. However, Japanese whaling on an industrial scale began around the 1890s when Japan started to participate in the modern whaling industry, at that time an industry in which many countries participated. Modern Japanese whaling activities have extended far outside Japanese territorial waters, including whale sanctuaries protected by other countries.