THE SEA FISHERIES 289 



attention to the northern waters that it inhabited. This 

 gave rise to the great Spitzbergen fishery which was 

 exploited both by the British and the Dutch. These whales 

 were very abundant, and apparently at first, tame and easy 

 to capture ; as a result the slaughter was wholesale, and 

 by the end of the nineteenth century the Greenland whale 

 was practically exterminated, so that these fisheries exist 

 no longer. 



At the present day the northern fisheries are practically 

 confined to the capture of the Rorqual, or Fin Whale, by 

 the Norwegians. This is a very fast swimming whale 

 and it was not until the invention of the explosive harpoon 

 in 1866 that any serious attempt at capturing it was 

 possible. Owing to its great vitality the old method of 

 capture by hand harpoon was practically useless and 

 extremely dangerous for the fisherman. But while in the 

 first years of the twentieth century these northern fisheries 

 were the most important in the Atlantic Ocean, now the 

 chief hunting grounds are in the frozen south. The whales 

 chiefly taken in the Antarctic are the Blue whale, the Fin 

 whale (Plate 103) and the Humpback, and the most 

 productive waters centre around the Falkland Islands. 

 Here, as in the North, the fishery is mainly carried out 

 by Norwegians. At the present day signs are not wanting 

 that even these fisheries may be on the decline, the Hump- 

 back whale, which in igio formed a very high percentage 

 of the catches, now being largely superseded by the Blue 

 whale. As a result the Falkland Islands Dependencies 

 in 1924 financed an expedition to study the life -histories 

 of the whales. During the last twelve years this Discovery 

 Expedition has carried out a scientific survey of the whaling 

 grounds and much new knowledge has been gained on the 

 distribution and migrations of whales. Important informa- 

 tion has been obtained on their growth and age at maturity 



