HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 25 



animal's movements are so impeded that it can be finished off fairly 

 easily (Fig. 12). This method is still being used in a few places for catching 

 sharks, but in the case of very large animals petrol drums, which have a 

 much greater buoyancy, have replaced the wooden blocks. 



The Indians on the East Coast probably caught Biscayan Right Whales, 

 while those on the West Coast (Cape Flattery and later Vancouver Island 

 across the Juan de Fuca Strait) hunted mainly Californian Grey Whales 

 (Fig. 10). Nowadays Grey W'hales are found only in the Northern 

 Pacific, though it is possible that they may have once occurred in the 

 North Atlantic as well. The animal reaches a maximum length of 45 feet, 

 and is dark grey in colour flecked with white spots. Its general structure 

 can be regarded as intermediate between Right Wliales and Rorquals, 

 though like the Right W^hales it has no dorsal fin, and is a very slow 

 swimmer (average speed 35 knots; maximum speed 7 knots, as compared 

 with the Rorquals' 18 knots and more). This fact must have helped small 

 Indian boats a good deal. 



The Grey Whale spends the summer in the Arctic, and particularly in 

 the Bering Sea. In autumn, it migrates south along the coast to winter 

 in the bays and lagoons of California. It is here that the females give birth 

 to their calves and can thei'efore be caught fairly easily. Oddly enough, 

 it took the white man until 1846 before he began to hunt Grey Whales 

 intensively in these waters. From then on they were captured in such 

 great numbers that the Grey Whale has become very scarce and, like 

 the Right Whale, is protected. Only the local population is allowed to 

 catch Grey Whales for their own needs. In this way, about fifty animals 

 are caught every year in Kamchatka, and Russian as well as American 

 biologists think that the whales are once again gradually increasing in 

 number. 



Europeans started whaling much earlier off the American East Coast, 

 and it is believed that the seventeenth-century British settlements in New 

 England were established because whaling off Cape Cod had proved so 

 profitable. In the eighteenth century, coastal fishing extended as far as 

 Maine in the north and South Carolina in the south. At first the catch 

 consisted predominantly of Biscayans, but as these became scarcer, 

 whalers were increasingly forced to switch to Humpbacks. The Humpback 

 Whale (Fig. 10) with its normal length of up to 50 feet is the smallest of 

 the big Rorquals. It has two properties which make it the Rorqual par 

 excellence for primitive coastal whaling. Firstly, it is a very slow swimmer 

 - its cruising speed never exceeds 32 to 5 knots - and secondly, like the 

 Grey Whale, its yearly migrations take place close to the shore. Moreover 

 its blubber is proportionately much thicker than that of other Rorquals. 

 One serious disadvantage to whalers is the fact that dead Humpbacks 



