HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 49 



immediately started to organize a statistical survey based on data collected 

 by all ships. The first paper was published in 1927, and on i6th August, 

 1929, the Norwegian government, at the suggestion of the International 

 Council for the Exploration of the Sea, founded the Committee for Whal- 

 ing Statistics. The headquarters of the committee are the offices of the 

 Hvalfangstforbund in Sandefjord. Its first Secretary was S. Risting, the 

 second H. B. Poulsen, and it is now vmder the capable directorship of 

 E. Vangstein. The Committee now receives data from practically every 

 ship and land station the world over. The data are entered on punch cards, 

 and the results are published annually in the International Whaling 

 Statistics. W'e can safely state that there is no other form of hunting or 

 fishing on which there exists comparably comprehensive information. 



Meanwhile the British, too, who after all were in control of South 

 Georgia and the Falkland Islands and who, moreover, were generally 

 concerned with the Antarctic, had begun their own investigations. The 

 Discovery Committee was founded in 1920; and it dispatched the Royal 

 research ship Discovery to make investigations in the vicinity of the Falkland 

 Islands. The Discovery was a sailing ship, and has since been replaced by 

 the Discovery II, a steel-built steamer which is a veritable floating labora- 

 tory. She has cruised throughout the length and breadth of the Antarctic, 

 gathering material wherever she went. At first the investigations were 

 concerned with a study of oceanography and the Arctic fauna and flora, 

 but from 1925-7 the present deputy director of the National Institute of 

 Oceanography, Dr N. A. Mackintosh, turned his attention to an inquiry 

 into w'haling resources. Together with J. F. G. Wheeler he examined no 

 less than i ,683 whales in South Georgia and South Africa, primarily with 

 a view to throwing greater light on their method of reproduction. The 

 results were published in Discovery Reports Vol. I, and Discovery Reports have 

 to this day remained one of the chief sources of whaling information. In 

 1949 the Discovery Committee was reorganized as part of the National 

 Institute of Oceanography, which is continuing the good work, though on 

 a somewhat smaller scale. 



The Norwegians did not stop at purely statistical work, and as early as 

 1924 the Hvalfangerforening requested Professor J. Hjort to join the Michael 

 Sars expedition to the Davis Strait. On 4th May, 1930, the Hvalrddt, the 

 supreme Norwegian whaling authority, founded the State Institute for 

 Whale Research {Statens Instituttfor Hvalforskning) as a special department 

 of the Institute for Marine Biology of the University of Oslo. Its director, 

 and the leading Norwegian authority on whaling research, was and is 

 Professor J. T. Ruud. The Institute published its papers both in the 

 Hvalrddets Skrifter and also in the official journal of the Hvalfangstforbund, 

 the Norsk Hvalfangst-Tidende whose editor is E. Vangstein. 



