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Between 1902 and 1920, the Tasmanian Government leased the island to Joseph Hatch (1837–1928) for his oil industry based on harvesting penguins.
Nooooooo!
And reading the source, the young 1 year old penguins were the only ones that were used.
Hatch was born in London but moved to Melbourne, Australia, as a young man. He then moved to Invercargill, New Zealand, where he started many enterprises, including a bone mill, a rabbit-skin exporting business, a soap and glycerin manufacturing business. Once he bought a stranded whale for 30 pounds and processed its products. The biggest venture of Hatch’s life, however, was the Macquarie Island elephant seal and penguin oil business.
This guy really hated animals. 🥺
Interesting.
Almost nothing piques my wiki interest more than remote Pacific Islands.
A comedy/history podcast I like called the Dollop did a great episode on this. A comedian researches a topic and then shares the info with his co-host. In this episode, the co-host, a well known animal lover, gets to discover that the cute penguins were turned into oil.
