Estropadak

Basques continue to celebrate their whaling and fishing tradition with Estropadak or Open-Sea Regattas, which are nothing like the typical regattas most people are used to. Thirteen oarsmen and the coxswain load into a very wide boat, modeled after the old fishermen's boats, which have fixed benches. They row out on the raucous Bay of Biscay to a buoy a mile or so out, row around it, and then race back into shore. This famous sport may have developed from fishermen racing one another back to shore with their day's catch; the first one back to shore got the best market price for his fish.
But as with all things Basque, the origins are uncertain and it could also be connected to Basque whalers racing each other out to sea. The first boat whose harpooner stabbed his harpoon into the whale became the "hunter" of that whale and so earned the greatest portion of its proceeds from the meat, blubber, teeth and baleen they processed.

Whaling

"Many think that the first who undertook so perilous a task as that of Whale fishing must have been eccentric hot heads. According to those who think so, that perilous chase could never have originated with the prudent men of the North, but must have been initiated by the Basques, those daring hunters and fishers who were so well accustomed to their own capricious sea, the Gulf of Gascony, where they fished the Tunny. Here they first saw the huge whales at play and pursued them, frenzied by the hope of such enormous prey, and pursued them still, onward and onward, no matter whither; even to the confines of the pole."
"La Mer" M.J. Michelet

then there came Basque whaling from Daggewood Films - Emily Lobsenz on Vimeo.