394 WHALES 



lack adequate information to gainsay them. In the Antarctic, however, 

 the outlook is rather bleak. At the beginning of the thirties 75 per cent of 

 the total catch still consisted of Blue Whales, but by 1 950-1 this figure had 

 dropped to 25 per cent, and since then to only 6 per cent. The last figure, 

 however, is partly the result of recent protective measures. Thus while the 

 Fin whale season has lately opened on 7th January, the Blue Whale 

 season only opens on ist February. Moreover, as we saw in Chapter 12, 

 Blue Whales keep more to the polar ice belt than Fin Whales and, since 

 the last war, expeditions have not ventured as far south as they 

 used to, not only in order to safeguard their increasingly costly ships, but 

 also because modern super-catchers operate much more efficiently on the 

 open sea than in the ice. Of course, it might be argued that they stay 

 outside the ice belt simply because it is no longer economical to go in 

 search of a diminishing Blue Whale population, but it is a fact that, even 

 today, the deeper a ship penetrates into the ice, the greater the percentage 

 of Blue Whales it catches. Still, the overall impression is that the popula- 

 tion has greatly shrunk since the thirties, and that present-day protective 

 measures are therefore fully justified. 



The yield of a Blue Whale is more or less equivalent to that of two Fin 

 Whales, and whalers have naturally preferred to kill one whale instead 

 of two for the same yield. The investigations of the Discovery Committee 

 have shown that w^iile Fin Whales outnumbered Blue Whales as early as 

 the thirties, the gap in numbers has grown so large since the war that Fin 

 Whales now' have to bear the full brunt of whaling. It has therefore been 

 asked whether their present numbers justify an annual catch of about 

 25,000 animals, and it is, at present, the main task of the International 

 Whaling Commission and particularly of the biologists attached to its 

 scientific sub-committee to decide this question. 



Unfortunately, this task is far from simple, for, though all the member- 

 states are agreed that protective measures are desirable, an industry which 

 has invested large capital in a whaling fleet and which gives employment 

 to tens of thousands is not so much concerned with whether prohibitive 

 steps are desirable, as with whether they are absolutely unavoidable. And 

 that question is, of course, far more difficult to decide, and requires much 

 more certainty than we have at present. The dangers of giving rash 

 opinions are best shown from the addresses which Sir Sidney F. Harmer, 

 one of the greatest experts on whales, presented to the Linnaean Society in 

 1928 and 1930. Though Sir Sidney stated unequivocally that the final 

 disaster could be expected very soon, and despite the enormous catches of 

 the thirties, whales have continued to keep whaling fleets extremely busy. 

 Naturally, we must not be led astray by false optimism either, but must 

 weigh up the evidence very carefully before passing final judgement. It is 



