342 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



The peak year since the Second World War was 195 1 when 3 1,072 

 whales were taken, yielding 358,000 tons of oil alone, which, being 

 valued at $475 per ton, represented the colossal total of some $170,- 

 000,000. Despite the popular and widespread jibes constantly di- 

 rected at the operating companies, even this huge gross, plus the pro- 

 ceeds of the sale of large amounts of fertilizer, bone meal, and several 

 specialized products, cannot possibly represent much of a net profit, 

 not only because of the enormous cost of fitting out and maintaining 

 the fleets involved. Sometime the fleets themselves have to be paid 

 for, and the floating factories are as big as large liners. They are also 

 packed with incredibly expensive machinery, not just with state- 

 rooms. Each ship costs millions. 



The taking of the whales by the catchers is in no wise different 

 from the method employed by those little ships when they worked 

 from shore stations. The only innovations have been the electric 

 harpoon, first successfully demonstrated in 1950 by catchers working 

 from the British ship the Balaena but not yet universally adopted, 

 and the introduction of little battery-charged radio transmitters that 

 are now planted in the dead whales to give out continuous signals 

 that can be picked up by the buoy boats and corvettes. This has al- 

 most eliminated the chance of losing a flagged whale even in the 

 white vastnesses of the Antarctic. Airplanes have also been employed 

 to spot whales and some rather loathsome experiments in bombing 

 them are reported. The real innovations in the current practice, 

 which distinguish it from the shore-based operations, are in the pro- 

 cedure aboard the factory ship. 



The whales are left floating alongside by the corvettes and, when 

 needed, are maneuvered around and attached, tail first, to the stern 

 of the big ship. An enormous metal grab, known as a hval kra, or 

 "whale-claw," slung on a complex of pulleys and steel cables, then 

 descends dexterously upon the "neck" of one of the tails, and the vast 

 corpse is hauled up a slipway. This ascends a tunnel in the "back" of 

 the ship, between the twin propeller shafts and under the after-bridge 

 structure, from which two funnels arise side by side, instead of fore 

 and aft. As it arrives on the vast afterdeck space, over a hundred 

 feet long, the head flensers leap upon it and make the primary cuts 

 in the blubber, which is then hauled off in long strips by winches. 

 When one side is clean, the corpse is rolled over and the other side 



