WHALE MARKING 



By George W. Rayner 

 (Plates XLIII-LXVIII; Text-fig. i) 



INTRODUCTION 



IN the Discovery Committee's investigations on the habits and life histories of whales, 

 observations on the living animal have formed an essential part of the programme, and 

 for the purpose of tracing movements and migrations a method of marking has been 

 devised. The marks, which are fired from a shot-gun, are in the form of small darts each 

 bearing a serial number. They become embedded in the whale's blubber and are found 

 when the whale's carcase is dismembered by the whalers. The geographical position at 

 which each mark is fired is recorded and a reward offered for its return with appropriate 

 data. 



The pursuit of whales is not easy, for they tend to follow an erratic course and they 

 offer only a fleeting target when they break surface to breathe. Consequently a small, 

 handy vessel, able to alter course quickly, is necessary for the work, and the R.R.S. 

 ' William Scoresby ' was built largely for this purpose. She is an oil-burning steam- 

 driven ship of 715 tons displacement, constructed on the lines of a modern whale- 

 catcher, but designed also for trawling and general oceanographical research (see 

 Discovery Reports, vol. 1, pp. 147, 148-9, 174-80). During the whole of the four whaling 

 seasons of 1934-35 to 1937-38 this ship has been engaged solely in marking the com- 

 mercially important species of whales on the pelagic whaling grounds of the Antarctic, 

 which have thus been covered from no° E westwards almost to Peter I Island in the 

 Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. 



In addition, intensive whale-marking on the whaling grounds around South Georgia 

 has been carried out with hired whale-catchers during the three seasons 1934-35 t0 

 1936-37. These expeditions, in the ' William Scoresby ' and in the hired whale-catchers, 

 have resulted in more than 5000 whales being marked, their distribution covering almost 

 the whole area of the Antarctic seas in which modern whaling has been undertaken. 

 Marks have been returned from whalers operating in all the parts of the Antarctic 

 grounds visited by them since the marking was accomplished, and some marks have also 

 been recovered in tropical and subtropical waters where whaling takes place during the 

 southern winter. Only a comparatively small number of marks has been returned as yet, 

 namely, 203 marks from 187 whales, but as a mark can be expected to remain in the 

 whale for many years returns should continue over a long period. In the meantime, 

 more especially because of the war, it has been thought expedient to publish the results 

 so far obtained, and a full list of the marks returned, with data, is given at the end of 

 this paper, Tables VI, VII and VIII. 



