Although it was created in 1961, Animal Whalers II was not released until 2002. Along with 45 other previously unreleased prints from Cape Dorset, this print was featured in the 1994 McMichael Canadian Art Collection exhibition Cape Dorset Revisited, which was accompanied by Susan Gustavison’s publication Arctic Expressions: Inuit Art and the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, 1961-1989 (cat. 28). In this catalogue Gustavison writes that Terry Ryan recalled that achieving a good quality registration of the blue background required considerable experimentation. This process of trial and error was well worth the endeavour in this particularly beautiful proof of the print: the background reads like a surge of dazzling blue waves, and the un-inked paper like tiny whitecaps, surrounding and rocking the intrepid animal boatmen.