314 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



the patient beast's exterior or in its inner recesses. Internal parasites 

 are legion. An adult humpback is, in fact, a parasitologist's paradise 

 and a happy hunting ground for any conchologist, helminthologist, 

 or crustaceologist who might run out of free-living specimens for 

 study. 



The poor humpback was attacked with gusto by the modern 

 whalers; first, because it was a coast-loving species; second, because 

 it was everywhere numerous; third, because it yielded a large amount 

 of good oil for its size; and fourth, because it had already been 

 hunted to a limited extent. Being a rorqual, or, rather, a fin whale, 

 it sinks when dead, but various offshore whalers had early learned 

 that it would eventually rise again because of the gases formed by 

 the decomposition of its internal matter. The first phase of modern 

 Norwegian whaling was directed at the true rorquals — the finners 

 and the blues and, parenthetically, the seis and Bryde's Whale — 

 but the whalers met and slaughtered humpbacks everywhere. So 

 great was the destruction of this species, moreover, that it was re- 

 duced to uneconomical numbers within twenty years. By 1920 it had 

 become a quite minor part of the annual catch, and today it is purely 

 incidental. The number caught, despite a more liberal quota for this 

 species, amounts to less than 2 per cent of the annual catch, yet there 

 was a time when it was so numerous that a special industry was de- 

 voted to its pursuit at a place called Wanganumumu in the channel 

 just inside Cape Brett, in New Zealand, using large motorboats and 

 huge steel nets. In 19 10 humpbacks formed over 95 per cent of the 

 catch in South Georgia waters; by the end of the First World War 

 the proportion had dropped to less than 10 per cent. The species has 

 not become extinct, and it shows signs of a healthy comeback, but 

 it is just too easy to kill to be able to multiply, despite modern con- 

 servation laws. 



Although the modern Norwegian industry was deliberately de- 

 vised to capture the true rorquals, it took almost half a century to 

 learn how to do the job adequately and economically. In the mean- 

 time it so reduced the number of humpbacks throughout the world, 

 and of finners, seis, and blues in the North Atlantic, that at one time 

 it showed distinct signs of going the way of all previous whaling 

 enterprises. The fortunate combination of Captain Larsen's discovery 

 of new whaling grounds in the antarctic ice, the invention of the 



