34 WHALES 



Hamburg expedition, and who led the Swedish South Pole expedition in 

 1 901, was struck by the great number of Rorquals off South Georgia 

 and the small islands in the neighbourhood of the southern tip of South 

 America. 



European financiers were slow to realize the vast potentialities of 

 Antarctic whaling, but Larsen managed to find the necessary capital in 

 Argentina. In 1904 he established the land station of Grytviken on South 

 Georgia, and in 1905 he sent the Admiralen to the Antarctic. By 1910 six 

 land stations and fourteen factoiy ships were in operation, and 10,230 

 animals were caught by forty-eight catcher boats. The factory ships were 

 all kept at anchor in the sheltered bays and inlets of South Georgia, the 

 South Shetlands, the South Sandwich Islands and the South Orkneys. Now, 

 all these islands happened to be British territory, and the British government 

 demanded a great deal of money for the anchorages. Moreover, the 

 number of whales in these regions was far from inexhaustible, and this 

 led to the idea that modern factory ships might just as well operate like 

 the old Sperm Whale hunters - on the open sea. 



A start was made in the winter of 1923. At first, flensing alongside the 

 mother-ship proved very awkward, but in 1925 the Lancing first employed 

 the slipway and the whole process was revolutionized. The slipway is a 

 stern-ramp over which the whales can be hauled to the cutting-up deck 

 (Fig. 13). The intestines are thrown ov^erboard, while the blubber and 

 also the bones (which are first cut up by steam saws) are fed into the 

 boilers below, where the oil is drawn off. 



In the beginning of the thirties came the modern 'claw' which engaged 

 the tail of the whale and ingeniously lifted the dead giant as it was moved 

 astern of the ship. Other modern improvements included radio-telephones 

 to the catcher boats, together with radar and asdic. After the Second 

 World War attempts were made to locate whales first from seaplanes, 

 and later from helicopters, but these have not been very successful so far. 



Equally unsuccessful were attempts to kill the animals by electrocution, 

 a method particularly dear to the UFAW (Universities Federation for 

 Animal Welfare) , a British society who consider this much more humane 

 than shell harpooning. Technically this method, which at first caused 

 more shocks to the whalers than to the whales, has now been mastered, 

 l:)ut it can still happen that instead of being killed, the whale is merely 

 stunned. It then regains consciousness with all the unpleasant con- 

 sequences that can be expected. Some investigators are, moreover, of the 

 opinion that the electrocution of whales has much the same effect as 

 curare, an American Indian arrow poison which has also been tried out 

 for catching whales. In both cases it is thought that the motor nerves 

 become blocked with the consequent paralysis of an otherwise consci9us 



