RIGHT WHALES 211 



one time used to send two to three hundred ships a year 

 northwards from British ports alone. 



The Bering Strait and Okhotsk Sea phase of the fishery had 

 commenced before the middle of the nineteenth century. It 

 was essentially an American enterprise and the whales, 

 although known to their pursuers as Bowheads, are not 

 regarded as being in any way specifically different from the 

 Greenland Right Whale. The story of this fishery is similar 

 to that of the other two just described. It commenced with 

 the discovery of the fishing ground ; it was carried on for 

 some time with great profit to the whalers ; this was followed 

 by a period during which whales were caught in greatly 

 diminished numbers, and finally the fishery became completely 

 unprofitable and had to be abandoned. The beginning of 

 the present century saw the extermination of the Bowhead in 

 this last retreat to be discovered. 



In Scoresby's time the Greenland Whale was so common 

 that it was referred to simply as " The Whale " or " The 

 Common Whale ", but between that time and the present it 

 has been so harried in every part of the Arctic it frequented 

 that now it must be classed as one of the rarest of whales 

 that exist in the sea. 



THE BLACK RIGHT WHALES {Balcena glacialis, Balana 

 australis, etc.) Fig. 61. 



The inclusive name of Black Right Whale is used here for 

 the sake of convenience to group together a number of forms 

 of Right Whale whose chief claim to differentiation into 

 species appea'rs to be that they occur in different geographical 

 areas. Thus in the past there have been identified B. glacialis 

 or biscayensis from the North Atlantic, B. australis from the 

 South Atlantic, B. antipodarum from the South Pacific, B. 

 japonica from the North Pacific and many others besides. It 

 is preferable for our present purpose at all events to regard 

 these, not as so many distinct species, but rather as local 

 races of one species which is widely distributed. 



In the north the Black Right Whale is commonly referred 

 to as the Biscayan or .North Atlantic Right. Whale by British 

 people, and as the Nordkaper by the Dutch ; the old French 



