48 WHALES 



length of a whale within a few feet from the appearance of any part of its 

 body. How well they know their jobs is best seen from the fact that the 

 number of reported mistakes is very small indeed. Thus during the 1954 

 season only i -2 per cent of all the whales killed in the Antarctic were fovmd 

 to be below the limit. 



Are these figures reliable ? Is there any reason why the crews should not 

 simply conceal their mistakes ? In fact, there is, for the sizes are checked 

 not by the whalers themselves but by government inspectors. Every 

 factory ship carries two such government officials who supervise the 

 measurements and whose task it is to see that international agreements 

 are fully observed. It would appear that they do their job very conscien- 

 tiously and that, while some governments may be laxer than others in 

 reporting mistakes to the international body, no serious lapses are suspected 

 anywhere. 



What happens when an error is discovered ? There are no international 

 sanctions, but each country deals with the problem separately. All 

 member states make it a rule to withhold payment and bonuses in respect 

 of illegally killed whales. This rule and the excellent tradition among 

 whalers have so far helped a great deal. Of course, international inspection 

 would lead to even better results, and there has been talk lately of neutral 

 observers from non-whaling countries. 



Clearly, if protective legislation is to be effective, it must be based on 

 accurate knowledge of the biology and habits of whales, in particular 

 of the distribution, the growth, and the method of reproduction. All this 

 requires much biological study, and twentieth-century whaling, therefore, 

 gave rise to a new discipline : applied whale biology. Actually, this dis- 

 cipline was not altogether new, for as early as 1 796 the Dutch Academy 

 of Science at Haarlem held a competition for 'the best biological descrip- 

 tion and natural history of whales, such as would help to discover their 

 habitat and the best methods of killing or catching them'. J. A. Bennet, a 

 Leyden Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine, was awarded the gold medal 

 for his paper on capturing whales, his description of a new kind of 

 harpoon, and his anatomical account of a whale foetus. 



Modern biologists are primarily concerned with statistical data on the 

 number, the sex, the length and other characteristics of captured 

 animals. It may be said that the spade-work was done by Major G. E. H. 

 Barrett-Hamilton who went to the land station at Leith Harbour (South 

 Georgia) in 191 3 to make anatomical investigations of the carcasses of 

 whales. Unfortunately, he died at his post a year later and it was not until 

 1925 that his data were published by Hinton. Norwegian whaling 

 companies are all members of JVorges Hvalfangstforbund (formerly Hval- 

 fangerforening), and when S. Risting became its secretary in 19 19, he 



