12 



Distribution and Migration 



WE HAVE SEEN that all whales are gluttons which swallow 

 their fatty diet by the ton with never a thought for their figures. 

 But then who can blame them - their table is so often bare. 

 With the onset of winter, when violent gales blow up and the ice floes 

 begin to shift to lower latitudes, a wall is gradually but remorselessly 

 driven between whales and their food and they must migrate to warmer 

 waters. Now^ while, to us, the tropics conjure up a picture of lush vegeta- 

 tion, most of the blue tropical waters, as a biologist put it, are in fact a 

 'desert in the sea'. 



The colourful wealth of tropical specimens so beloved of all aquarists is 

 a wealth of species and not of individuals. Vast concentrations of plankton, 

 and with them vast concentrations of plankton-feeders, are extremely rare 

 in the tropics. The exceptions are the sea off the Galapagos Islands, the 

 Caribbean Sea, the Arabian Sea (particularly the Gulf of Aden) and a 

 few other places. These waters teem with plankton, fishes and even with 

 squids and, not surprisingly, schools of up to i ,000 dolphins can be found 

 here, together with such predominantly tropical whales as Sei Whales, 

 Bryde's Whales, and female Sperm Whales. Possibly even such true 

 migrating whales as Blue Whales, Fin Whales and Humpback Whales 

 spend at least part of the winter in these regions to supplement their 

 sparse diet. 



In any case, to reach these seas, whales have to travel through waters 

 which are extremely barren, and hence the stomachs of whales caught at 

 tropical and sub-tropical whaling stations are nearly always empty. For 

 instance, at Tangalooma, an Australian land station, only one out of 2,000 

 Humpbacks was found to have food in its stomach, and similar observa- 

 tions are reported from African stations as well. Thus, while migrating 

 whales may get some food on their long journey, they certainly do not 

 get very much, and for at least four months of the year they have to go 

 with almost no food at all. A human being would perish under such 



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