HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 57 



autumn the animals migrate from the Arctic to sub-tropical and even to 

 tropical waters. They generally move in fairly large schools. The Scots 

 began to hunt the Bottlenose in 1877, and the Norwegians followed in 

 1882. However, the Norwegians set to with a will, and in 1895 seventy 

 Norwegian ships caught 3,000 of the animals in Arctic waters. Nowadays, 

 the Arctic catch of Bottlenoses is insignificant, but a few Bottlenoses are 

 still caught by Norwegian land stations. 



The 'great' whaling industry had always been uninterested in such 

 'dwarfs' as the Little Piked Whale or Lesser Rorqual, since the yield from 

 this 30-foot animal was too small to bother about. Externally, the Piked 

 Whale resembles the Fin W'hale (Fig. 10), of which it seems to be a dwarf 

 replica, except for the fact that it has a white band on the outer surface of 

 the flipper. In whaling circles, it is refened to as the Minke Whale, 

 supposedly because one of Svend Foyn's men, Meincke by name, mistook 

 a school of Piked Whales for Blue W^hales. His error so amused whalers 

 the world over that his name became a household word amongst them. 

 It was during the Second World War (1940) that Norway first turned her 

 attention to these whales also. The meat of the Piked Whale is very tasty 

 and the carcass small enough to be flensed aboard the catcher boats 

 themselves. The meat and blubber are taken ashore, which involves 

 carrying enough ice for a trip of two to three weeks. In 1949, the best year, 

 approximately 4,000 Piked Whales were caught, and the Norwegian 

 government was forced to take protective measures. Piked Whales are 

 also caught in other parts of the world, particularly oflT Japan and New- 

 foundland, for they occur in most seas. 



We have at last told the story of men and whales, the story of man's 

 age-long hunt for food and other valuable products, a story that is 

 unfolded all the way from the coasts of Greenland to the South Sea 

 Islands, over all the seas from the Arctic seas of the barren north right 

 across the warm waters of the tropics to the bleak Antarctic. The story 

 began in the Stone Age and may end — if we ever let it come to that — 

 when the last whale has been killed and the last dolphin harpooned. Let 

 us hope that this will never be, and that man will show himself a inore 

 capable administrator of his earthly trusteeship. Let us hope there will be 

 whales in the sea, and whale-meat in our larders, as long as man con- 

 tinues on earth. If that is to happen we need much more knowledge of the 

 structure and behaviour of animals that have always excited the interest of 

 all serious naturalists, who are particularly anxious to know what happens 

 when a mammal becomes adapted to an unusual environment -water. The 

 study of whales is at one and the same time the study of life on earth, and 

 it is my earnest hope that this book may contribute its small share towards it. 



