Although it was created in 1961, Animal Whalers II was not released until 2002. Along with forty-five other previously unreleased prints from Cape Dorset, it was featured in the 1994 McMichael Canadian Art Collection exhibition Cape Dorset Revisited, accompanied by Susan Gustavison’s publication Arctic Expressions: Inuit Art and the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, 1961–1989 (cat. 28). 

In the catalogue, Gustavison notes Terry Ryan’s recollection that achieving a clean and consistent registration of the blue background required considerable trial and error. The effort was well worth it. In this edition, the blue background rises and swells like a field of waves, dazzling and kinetic. The untouched paper breaks through the ink like small whitecaps, animating the surface with a sense of motion. The animal boatmen packed closely together in the vessel as it is gently by the rhythm of the sea.