664 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



As soon as 1 had finisbed my exaraination work and had gotten the 

 necessary apparatus I started for the North and arrived at Vardo on 

 the 15th of July. After a stay of eight days, which I chiefly spent in 

 gathering information regarding the fisheries which had just come to 

 an end, and in investigating the physical conditions of those localities 

 where the fisheries are principally carried on, I went to Vadso, where I 

 staid three weeks. Here I had every opportunity to study Foyn's 

 whale fisheries, which just then were in very successful operation. 

 Nearly every day I could examine whales which had been caught by 

 him, and several times I had a chance of witnessing the way in which 

 these fisheries are carried on. 



The result at which I arrived regarding the influence which the whale 

 fisheries may have on the other fisheries coincides exactly with my opin- 

 ion which I had formerly expressed to the department. It is my firm 

 conviction, now as then, that no danger whatsoever need be appre- 

 hended from the whale fisheries. I have in a former report to the de- 

 partment given my reasons for this view, and now, after having per- 

 sonally examined the matter, I can add a fact which proves still more 

 fully that the complaints made against Foyn's fisheries are entirely un- 

 founded. The kind of whale which Foyn catches almost exclusively, 

 the so-called blue whale {Balcenoptera Sihhaldii), has in all probability 

 nothing whatever to do with the other fish. Eepeated iu vestigations of 

 the contents of its stomach have convinced me that its food consists 

 almost exclusively of a small transparent shrimp {Thysanopoda inermis), 

 which by the inhabitants of this coast is called "kril." Although 

 there was no lack of herrings of different sizes during the time I staid 

 in the Varanger fiord, I never found the slightest trace of herrings in 

 the stomach' of the blue whales, and Foyn himself has assured me that 

 he never had found any herring in the whale. The whale which is 

 mostly found here is of a much smaller kind (probably BaUBnoptera 

 laticeps), a whale which Foyn does not care for at all, because it is neither 

 as large nor as fat as the blue whale. Besides this whale two other 

 kinds of whale come here during the herring fisheries (so I have at least 

 been informed), viz, the Balcenoptera musculus and the Megaptera loops, but 

 both of them in smaller numbers. All these three kinds of whales seem 

 to leave the coast when the herring fisheries have come to an end and 

 follow the herring to the ocean; while the blue whale only begins to 

 approach the coast in any considerable number after the herring fisheries, 

 in order to feed on the enormous masses of "kril," which at this time 

 are by the current driven toward the coast, especially in the Varanger 

 fiord. Even those who still hold to the old opinion, that the whales 

 chase the herrings toward the coast, will thus have no reasonable cause 

 for anxiety, as Foyn does not catch the so-called herring-whale, but 

 chiefly a different kind which comes near the coast at a later season of 



the year. • \ t 



Besides these investigations (concerning Foyn's whale fisheries) i 



