164 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



Atlantic, and in the upper reaches of Baffin Bay (see map). In win- 

 ter they come south as far as latitude 65° N. between Iceland and 

 Greenland and to 58° N. in Davis Strait. They have never been 

 found east of Novaya Zemlya in the Kara Sea. The bowhead of 

 the North Pacific is somewhat different and has been given the name 

 of Balaena sieboldii. In summer it is in the Siberian, Wrangel, and 

 Beaufort Seas (see map page 255), and in winter migrates through 

 the Bering Strait to the Bering Sea and south through the Kuriles 

 to the Sea of Okhotsk. It used to be very numerous in the latter sea, 

 where the young, called "poggies," were born. The single calf is 

 fourteen to sixteen feet long at birth and stays with its mother for 

 a year. 



The bowhead is an excessively timid animal and even slight sounds 

 or a small bird alighting on its back will send it rushing off in a 

 frenzy. It is one of the, if not the, slowest swimmers of all whales, 

 wallowing along at about four and a half knots and being able to 

 raise only nine knots even in extremis. When unalarmed and travel- 

 ing, bowheads stay below for about ten minutes; when feeding, for 

 about twenty minutes; but in either case they usually breach three or 

 four times in quick succession before going below again. Wounded 

 specimens have, however, stayed below for over an hour and a half. 

 They are enormously powerful creatures and have been known to 

 dive with such force in comparatively shallow water that they 

 smashed their jaws on the bottom. 



The arctic right whale was first discovered by the Basques some- 

 time in the early sixteenth century, or still earlier, if we accept their 

 presence off Greenland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 

 Spitsbergen is at the border of the winter ice and so far within the 

 Arctic Circle that navigation, whaling, or any other operations are 

 impossible there except during a comparatively short summer sea- 

 son. Furthermore, as we have seen, Spitsbergen was reached only in 

 the first decade of the seventeenth century. Thus, it was not until 

 then that the arctic right whale could be hunted in its summer 

 quarters in the East Greenland Sea. 



The Hollanders built a small, permanent whaling depot for use 

 in the summer months on Jan Mayen Island (see map) in 16 17, but 

 two years later they decided to move their main operations to Spits- 

 bergen. They had always been competent seamen, but they also 



