THE OLDER STAGES 127 



the order in this area; indeed one is tempted to beHeve that ecologically it is the most important 

 zooplankton organism of the Antarctic'. Tattersall (1913) refers to it as the euphausian /)ar excellence 

 of the Antarctic seas. Because of its vast abundance there exists an industry into which in the last 

 fifty odd years huge capital sums have been sunk and into which millions more are being poured 

 today, an industry which for the most part has yielded great profit to those who engage in it, which has 

 provided the world with an essential raw material of prime importance both in peace and war and 

 above all one which, through the wisdom and foresight of the existing international control, might 

 yet, as in the past, continue to benefit mankind for many years to come. 



It is not, however, the great rorquals of commerce only, the blue and fin whales, that depend on 

 the krill for their existence. The smaller humpback and sei,^ the formerly abundant but now scarce 

 and rigidly protected southern right,^ the minke or little piked whale,^ the millions of Crabeater seals 

 that haunt the pack-ice,* and the hordes of Adelie, Ringed and Gentoo^ penguins in their coastal 

 rookeries all feed, the majority of them for all practical purposes exclusively,^ upon this little pelagic 

 prawn.^ 



Of the large, or moderately large, Balaenopterids resident and hunted in southern waters, Bryde's 

 whale (Balaenoptera edeni Anderson) seems to be the sole representative that does not prey upon the 

 Antarctic krill. For long after Olsen (1913) originally described it from Saldanha Bay it was thought 

 to be rare and to occur only locally. Recent reports, however (Best, i960), have revealed it to be 

 widely spread and far more abundant than was formerly believed. It feeds principally on small sub- 

 tropical Clupeoids, pilchard or anchovy, and so far, as Best remarks, has not been recorded from the 

 Antarctic. Probably because of its feeding habits he adds it tends to remain in the same locality 

 throughout the year and has no need to make a long migration. 



Vivid accounts of the magnitude of the toll exacted by a single penguin rookery are given by Wilson 

 (19076) and Levick (19150) in their remarks on the Adelies of Cape Adare, where, it is estimated, 

 some three quarters of a million birds congregate annually to breed. The quantity of euphausians, 

 says Wilson, brought ashore there daily must be immense, adding that ' parents hurry in ashore from 

 one end of the twenty-four hours to the other without cessation, their stomachs loaded with a mess of 

 shrimps. Chickens by the hundred stand in little groups of twelve or twenty, now in a state of bulging 



1 At least during its annual wanderings (Matthews, 19386) into Antarctic waters. Since the sei does not range into such 

 high and cold latitudes as do the blue, fin and humpback whales (Mackintosh, 19426; Clarke, 1957) it is distinctly probable 

 that it is on the northerly, relatively warm South Georgia whaling grounds that it exacts its most significant toll of the krill. 



^ Brown (1958) refers to the increasing abundance of this species during the last few years at Tristan da Cunha, noting 

 that one observer (Elliott, 1953) states that it is 'becoming increasingly numerous and almost a pest'. It may be on the 

 increase too in the Patagonian region, Ruud and Oynes (1959) reporting a school of twenty there in 38° 4' S, 56° 59' W in 

 November 1956. It seems possible, therefore, that the southern right is now in fact beginning to recover from the ravages of 

 last century. 



^ A minke harpooned from the whaleship 'Antarctic' near the Balleny Islands in January 1895 is stated by Bull (1896) 

 to have had the stomach filled with small red ' shrimps'. Mr Gordon Williamson, biologist and whaling inspector in the floating 

 factory 'Balaena' in 1957-8, recently gave me two samples of E. superba he collected from two small piked whales which 

 appear to be a colour variety of the well known minke of Lacepede, but may prove (Williamson, 1959) to be a separate 

 species. Mr Williamson has just called attention to the exceedingly large numbers of minkes that frequent the Antarctic 



seas 

 4 



Crabeater seals, sometimes in enormous numbers, have been reported by every major expedition that has passed through 

 the pack in the southern summer or, as the Belgian expedition did in 1898, wintered in it. In view of the vast extent of the 

 circumpolar pack this species may prove (Bertram, 1940; Laws, 1958; Bertram, 1958) to be the world's most abundant seal. 

 SchelTer (1958) puts its numbers at between two and five million. 



^ According to Murphy (1936) the stomachs of Macaroni penguins have variously been reported to contain Euphausiid 

 crustaceans, cephalopod beaks, or both. 



^ The southern right, however (Matthews, 1932), like the sei, only in the higher latitudes of its range. 



' The largest specimen I have seen, a female, measured 65 mm., or a little over zh in. 



