Whaling Monument

The Whaling Monument, designed by the international artist Pedro Cabrita Reis, is a tribute to the former whalers of Lajes do Pico.
The monument, erected precisely where, until the 1950s, the sperm whales were dismantled, is a kind of gigantic doorway, covered in marble, reminiscent of a moving wave, with a gap at the base connecting the earth and the sea, man and animal.
The names of the whalers are engraved on both sides of the monument, as well as the names of the companies, the names of the builders, the boats and tow boats they built and which are registered in the official records from the year 1954 onwards.
The Whaling Monument is an homage to those who, for over a century, hunted whales as a means of survival in Lajes do Pico, also contributing to the development of an industrial activity that greatly benefited the local economy.

Trywork

Until the 1950s, tryworks were a system used to better harness the potential of hunted cetaceans, representing a way of transforming sperm whale blubber into oil before the existence of factories or industrial structures for that purpose.
The transformation and melting structures consisted of a ramp, a cutting platform in stone, and try-pots, a small unit for melting blubber into oil in large open-air cauldrons through a process called "direct fire", powered by firewood at it’s base.