THE STOCK OF WHALES 285 



which involves technical and political matters, would be out of place here, 1 but it may- 

 be helpful if attention is drawn to the relative effect on the stock of hunting the different 

 kinds of whales at different times of year and in different places. 



SPECIES AND CLASSES OF WHALES 



It is naturally desirable that regulations should extend protection to those species and 

 classes of whales which are most in need of it, and at the same time, so far as possible, 

 allow for the maximum production per whale killed. For instance, other things being 

 equal, it is better that old whales should be killed than immature ones, since the former 

 will have reproduced themselves, and not the latter; and it is better that large or fat 

 whales should be killed than small or thin ones, because the products obtained will be 

 greater per unit removed from the stock, or, to put in another way, fewer whales will be 

 killed for a given yield. In different regions and at different times of year the catches 

 will be composed of different proportions of species, sexes, sizes, ages, and sexual and 

 physical conditions of whales ; and it is because the killing of some of these categories is 

 more harmful to the stock than the killing of others that the effect of whaling will differ 

 in different localities and at different times of year. 



(i) Blue, Fin and Humpback whales are the three species with which we are primarily 

 concerned here, and the reasons have been given in previous pages for believing that the 

 Humpback and Blue whales, especially the former, are more in need of protection than 

 the Fin whale. It might be argued that it would make little difference to the total raw 

 materials available whether the catching was mostly of one species or equally of all three 

 except in so far as some species are more productive than others. This is perhaps a 

 debatable point, but apart from any opinions on the desirability of protecting the fauna 

 as an end in itself, it is probable that the catching of an already depleted species will 

 cause a greater reduction of the total stock than the same amount of hunting of a species 

 whose numbers have not been much affected. Thus it is probable that a given number 

 of Fin whales killed could be replaced by natural regeneration of the stock, while the 

 same number of Humpbacks killed (or still more the equivalent number in Blue whale 

 units) would result in a definite reduction of the stock because it can be assumed that 

 the Humpback stock is smaller, besides being segregated into more or less self-contained 

 communities, and therefore has less capacity for regeneration. 



(ii) It is reasonable to suppose that males can be more easily spared from the stock 

 than females. The killing of females must be presumed to impair the regenerative 

 capacity of the stock more than the killing of males, for there is no reason to suppose 

 that whales are strictly monogamous. 



(iii) The question of size is closely connected with that of age and sexual and physical 

 maturity. The occurrence and distribution of these classes of whales will be better 



1 For information on regulations in force before the war reference should be made to the International 

 Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling of 1937 and the Protocol of 1938 (see References, p. 299). The 

 Final Acts of the conferences, published with the texts of the Agreement and Protocol, are especially 

 informative, for they give a concise account of the purpose of the regulations, of other measures which have 

 been considered, and of the difficult problems which are involved in such legislation. 



