FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL, 85, NO. 3 



MATERIAL AND METHODS 



From logbook extractions, Townsend (1935) 

 tabulated the numbers of sperm, bowhead, right, 

 humpback, and gray whales taken per voyage by 

 744 whaleships (mostly American) between 1751 

 and 1925. These figures include not only the 

 whales processed but also those killed and 

 brought alongside but subsequently lost before 

 processing; these statistics have thus been termed 

 the "landed catch" in this paper. The numbers of 

 right whales are listed by ocean (i.e., North and 

 South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and In- 

 dian Oceans). In all, 53,877 whales are listed from 

 1,665 voyages. Excluding non-U. S. vessels, 

 16,837 baleen whales were taken in a total of 

 1.651 voyages, of which 636 were only sperm 

 whaling voyages. The species composition of the 

 baleen whale catch as extracted by Townsend has 

 formed the basis of all the analyses performed in 

 this paper, and is henceforward referred to as the 

 "Townsend sample". 



Some of the original work sheets used by 

 Townsend in his 1935 paper were discovered in 

 1978 in the library of the Osborne Laboratory of 

 the New York Aquarium. These comprise voyage 

 abstracts giving the date, ocean, geographical po- 

 sition, number, and species of each whale landed, 

 together with remarks such as "found dead", "cow 

 and calf", etc.; about half of the work sheets are in 

 the original handwriting of the compiler(s), while 

 the remainder consist of typewritten copies. The 

 abstracts cover voyages by most vessels whose 

 names started with letters A through J (bark A. 

 Houghton to brig Juno ). Because some errors ap- 

 parently occurred between the original abstracts 

 and the final printed version (Schevill and Moore 

 1983), the catch data for the 438 voyages on which 

 baleen whales were landed and for which ab- 

 stracts were available has been checked against 

 the figures tabulated by Townsend (1935). Errors 

 were found in 32 voyages (or about 7% of the 

 total) and corrected. The abstracts examined rep- 

 resent a landed catch of 6,982 baleen whales, or 

 roughly 41''/^ of the total Townsend sample. 



Mean oil and whalebone yields per whale have 

 been obtained by comparing the numbers of 

 whales caught on a voyage (as listed by 

 Townsend ) with the amount of whale oil or whale- 

 bone landed for the same voyage (as listed by 

 Starbuck ( 1878) or Hegarty ( 1959)). To avoid com- 

 plications created when more than one baleen 

 whale species was taken, only voyages where a 

 single baleen whale .species was taken have been 



analyzed. Because of suspected differences in size 

 (and so presumably in yields of products) between 

 North Pacific right whales and those from other 

 seas (Omura 1958), they have been considered as 

 a separate "species" for the purposes of this sec- 

 tion. In order to reduce the amount of variation in 

 yield and to avoid situations where Townsend 

 seems to have had access to only a partial log of 

 the voyage, only voyages on which 10 or more 

 animals of that species were taken have been 

 used (or roughly 20% of Townsend's sample of 

 voyages on which whalebone whales were taken). 

 Oil or bone sent home or sold abroad has been 

 included where it is known; as Starbuck (1878) 

 has pointed out, that sold abroad was not always 

 accounted for. 



Figures for the total annual importation of oil 

 and whalebone into the United States have been 

 taken from Starbuck (1878) and Hegarty (1959). 



For the catch per voyage analysis, the voyages 

 in the Townsend sample have been stratified ac- 

 cording to type, either sperm (when only that spe- 

 cies was landed), whalebone (when no sperm 

 whales were included in the catch), or mixed 

 (when both sperm and whalebone whales were 

 taken). The numbers of such cruises have then 

 been adjusted upwards by the numbers of such 

 voyages found in the Starbuck/Hegarty compila- 

 tion, where vessels were identified as sperm 

 whalers if they were reported as returning with 

 or sending home only sperm oil, as whalebone 

 whalers if they only reported whale oil and/or 

 bone, and as mixed whalers if they returned with 

 or sent home both whale oil/bone and sperm oil. 

 Two additional classes were recognized in the 

 Starbuck/Hegarty compilation: "clean" voyages 

 and "incomplete" voyages. Clean voyages were 

 those entered as such by Starbuck (1878), but as 

 Hegarty (1959) did not continue this practice, any 

 of the voyages he listed that were completed but 

 for which no production was reported were scored 

 as "clean". Both authors listed several voyages 

 that were not completed owing to fire, shipwreck, 

 the vessel being condemned, etc., and for which 

 no production was reported. These voyages were 

 scored as "incomplete", and half their number 

 was allocated on a prorata basis as either sperm, 

 whalebone, mixed, or clean whalers, based on the 

 proportions of these categories in the sample of 

 completed voyages. The other half of the incom- 

 plete voyages was discarded, the assumption 

 being that such voyages were on average proba- 

 bly half as successful as those completed and that 

 Townsend (1935) was unlikely to have had access 



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