23 6 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



different species appear in the Antarctic catches in much the same proportions as at 

 South Georgia. Blue and Fin whales are the most important and Humpbacks have at 

 times been taken also in considerable numbers. (See International Whaling Statistics, 

 no. II, pp. 12 and 26-7, and no. xiv, p. 5.) 



The southern whaling centres described above may now be usefully classified as follows : 



(1) Winter whaling 



(a) Tropical localities in which the industry is dependent almost entirely on Hump- 

 backs in coastal waters: Congo, Brazil, Angola, East Africa, West Australia and 

 Madagascar. 



(b) Subtropical or warm temperate localities in which several species are of im- 

 portance in the catches : Walvis Bay, Natal, Cape Province, and Chile 1 and Peru. 



(2) Summer zohaling 



(a) Temperate or sub-Antarctic localities at which whaling has been conducted only 

 on a small scale : Kerguelen and Falkland Islands. 



(b) Antarctic waters 2 in which the catches consist mainly of Blue and Fin whales but 

 have at times included also substantial numbers of Humpbacks : South Georgia and the 

 Antarctic pelagic whaling grounds. 



It is uncertain whether the stations at Jervis Bay and New Zealand should be included 

 in the tropical or subtropical category. They were Humpback fisheries but rather south 

 of the characteristic tropical coastal resorts of this species in winter, and it is doubtful 

 whether such small catches are fully representative of the local whale population. 



This classification is of assistance in a study of the distribution of whales and of the 

 effect of whaling on the stock. 



MIGRATIONS AND DISTRIBUTION 



Certain broad features of the distribution of whales in the southern hemisphere may 

 be gathered from a comparison of the catches in different whaling centres. Thus it is 

 obvious from Table 9, p. 229, that Blue, Fin and Humpback whales are to be found in 

 large numbers in the Antarctic in the southern summer, that all three species frequent 

 temperate regions in the southern winter, but that Blue and Fin whales are much 

 scarcer than Humpbacks in the tropics, at any rate in coastal regions. Sei whales are 

 common enough in temperate regions in winter, but in summer they do not venture so 

 far south as the other species. 



In summer Blue and Fin whales are distributed in a more or less continuous circum- 

 polar belt in the Southern Ocean. This is a matter of common experience, and is evident 

 in the Discovery Committee's records of whales identified at sea, though, as will be 

 seen, the abundance of these species may vary in different sectors. Hansen's Atlas over 

 Antarktis og Sydishavet (1936) shows the positions in which whales were taken by the 

 pelagic fleet between 1929 and 1934, and gives a striking impression of the zone in which 



1 See footnote, p. 232. 



2 I.e. not necessarily within the Antarctic circle but south of the Antarctic convergence which marks the 

 northern boundary of the Antarctic surface water (see Fig. 2 and Deacon, 1937, p. 22). 



