Introductory xi 



rated from the oceans and completely surrounded by land, but there 

 are also others like the Scotia Sea which are almost entirely sur- 

 rounded by water, but which nonetheless are clearly separated by 

 shallows. This latter type, moreover, is of great importance and has 

 a very real biological significance that can be displayed only on 

 aquacentric maps. 



These "sea-islands," or "sea-countries," as we shall call them, often 

 have very distinctive climates and other environmental features, and 

 they are often populated by most characteristic assemblages of ani- 

 mals. This may come as somewhat of a surprise to many, for it 

 might seem logical to suppose that, water being a continuous me- 

 dium, the animal life of the sea would spread indiscriminately hither 

 and yon and, within the more obvious Hmits of temperature, depth, 

 and salinity, become universal. This, however, it does not do, for 

 these sea-countries display features just as unique to themselves as 

 do any land-islands, and this predisposes much variation in their 

 fauna, including the incidence of whales. Thus, when we come to 

 investigate our sixth question — what whales did men follow — we 

 find that the sea-countries to which they went and the particular 

 ocean to which each was attached is of paramount importance. 



Each of the major and many of the minor whaUng industries have 

 for this reason been concerned with a special kind of whale or group 

 of whales. This has not, however, necessarily been dictated by the 

 presence of those particular whales in the seas adjacent to the home- 

 lands of the whalers. The Dutch had to go to the ice front before 

 they found the arctic right whale; the modem Norwegians have 

 had to go to the Antarctic in pursuit of the rorquals; the New 

 Englanders had to sail the whole earth to find the sperming grounds. 

 The popular notion, therefore, that "whaling" simply means getting 

 into a boat and going out to sea and harpooning a "whale" will have 

 to be abandoned and a quite new concept adopted, for whaling in 

 every case entails much more than just that. It means going to a 

 particular sea-country, often at a definite time of the year, and fol- 

 lowing a certain kind of whale, in a very special way. It is particu- 

 larly in respect to this ever-changing procedure that the history of 

 whaling is so fascinating. 



Whales, as will be seen presently, are of great variety and are not, 

 it must be clearly understood, by any means all vast leviathans of 



