358 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Institute of Oceanography, who gave me most useful advice on certain statistical points, and I am 

 grateful to Mr J. A. Gulland, of the Fisheries Laboratory, Lowestoft, who kindly read through the 

 typescript of the paper and made several helpful comments. 



MARKING IN THE ANTARCTIC AREAS 

 Hjort, Lie & Ruud (1932-38), Bergersen, Lie & Ruud (1939), and Bergersen & Ruud (1941), in 

 a series of papers on ' Pelagic Whaling in the Antarctic ' divided the Antarctic whaling grounds south 

 of 50 S into five areas. Area I was a small area around the South Shetland Islands and Areas II-V, 

 from 6o° W to 170 W, were based on the distribution of the whaling fleet which the authors showed 

 to form separate concentrations in each area, these being founded on inferred separate concentrations 

 of Blue and Fin whales in each of the four areas. Mackintosh (1942) examined the distribution of 

 Blue, Fin and Humpback whales around the Antarctic continent and came to the conclusion that 

 Humpbacks in the southern hemisphere are divided into several separate communities between which 

 there can be very little exchange. Each of the Areas II-V appears to contain one of these Humpback 

 communities. While Blue and Fin whales are more evenly distributed in the Antarctic than Hump- 

 backs, they have at least a tendency to concentrate in the same areas as the Humpbacks and this is 

 more definite in Blue than in Fin whales. He suggested that the Area I of Hjort, Lie & Ruud might 

 suitably be extended to cover 6o° W to 120 W and that a new Area VI from 120 W to 170 W might 

 be created. This proposal was accepted in 1947 by the Whaling Committee of the International 

 Council for the Exploration of the Sea, 1 and in the present paper the boundaries of Area I have been 

 modified accordingly. 



These six areas are shown in Fig. 1, which also shows where whale-marking has been carried out. 

 The method of hatching, to show the relative intensity of marking, is taken from Rayner's Plate xlv 

 (1940). The diagonally hatched areas show where marking has been chiefly conducted and where 

 most whales have been marked. There is a comparatively small area of intensive marking around 

 South Georgia, and around the Shag Rocks a smaller area, of 70 miles radius, indicated by denser 

 cross-hatched shading, where more than 600 have been marked. There are two other extensive areas 

 in which relatively large numbers of whales have been marked, one off Queen Mary Land (85— 95 E) 

 and a second, much larger, extending westwards from Enderby Land (15-50 E). In addition, whales 

 in smaller numbers have been marked over an immense area connecting and extending these principal 

 regions ; on the chart the continuous longitudinal lines show where this marking has been relatively 

 dense, the broken lines where it has been sporadic. This of course gives only a rough impression of 

 the initial distribution of marked whales, but it is probably sufficient for the purposes of the present 

 paper. Fuller details of the positions of marking were published by Rayner in a short second report 

 (1948). Here it should be noted that marking was spread over four of the six areas (i.e. Areas I-IV), 

 that large numbers of whales were marked in Area II near South Georgia (by hired catchers), and 

 especially to the west of the island, and that many whales have been marked also in Areas III and IV. 

 The numbers marked in each area are given in Table 5, p. 374. 



DISPERSAL OF WHALES 

 Rayner's data included marks recovered after periods up to four years, and these suggested that in 

 both Blue and Fin whales the range of dispersal was limited, movements after four vears having no 

 greater amplitude than those after one year. 



In the present paper, the term ' dispersal ' will be used to describe the ultimate movement of 

 whales east or west from the position in which they were marked, and whales which show this move- 

 1 See Rapp. et Proc.-Verb. des Reunions, 1947, Cons. Perm. Internat. Explor. Mer, cxvn, p. 43. 



