Several early modern sources for a natural history of whales in Portugal are now emerging in a variety of forms – news, memoirs, poems, and studies – with clear, new, and rich references to ichthyology. The large cetaceans, when they beached on the Portuguese coast or accidentally entered the Tagus River (Lisbon), aroused the curiosity of the common people, of nobles and scholars. Whales and the resources that were extracted from them were important for food, lighting, and apothecaries, and the accumulation of knowledge about them and technology to hunt and process them was valuable. Some written sources, mostly the ones that aimed at an erudite audience and at describing the biology and behaviour of marine animals, were likewise accompanied by illustrations. Many of these publications were adapted to local contexts and translated into other vernacular languages from Portuguese, while others were lost in time almost to the present day (such as the 18th-century manuscript entitled Piscilegio Lusitano). Nevertheless, in Lisbon and Portugal, whales gained a cultural existence beyond their biological life. These large and fascinating animals enriched the local cultural life, being a metaphor to address moral issues, the motto of poems (such as the one called Dona Baleia da Costa) and became main characters of the real processions of people who went to watch the beached whales.