THE NATURAL HISTORY OF WHALEBONE WHALES? 
By N. A. MACKINTOSH 
“Discovery” Investigations, London 
[With 2 plates] 
I. INTRODUCTION 
The whalebone whales (which include all the large species except 
the sperm whale) generally resort to parts of the open ocean which are 
remote from human settlements and shipping routes, and they are 
visible at the surface for perhaps a twentieth of the time they spend 
submerged. They are thus not easily accessible for biological investi- 
gations, and their inmmense bulk, sometimes exceeding 100 tons, 
makes dissection almost impossible without the aid of machinery. 
The best means of access is provided by the whaling industry, and 
most research on whales has made direct or indirect use of the op- 
portunities it provides. In modern whaling factories the carcasses can 
be examined in large numbers, for they are hauled out of the water 
and quickly dismembered; much information is to be had from the 
statistics of catches; and the numbers caught are sufficient to make 
the marking of whales a profitable method of research. At the same 
time more independent observations are also needed, for the hunting 
of whales is affected by geographical and economic factors, weather 
conditions, the selection of certain species, etc., and the catches in con- 
sequence are not strictly representative of the stock. Thus separate 
observations from ships not engaged in whaling (and perhaps in the 
future from the air) constitute an important means of studying the 
distribution, numbers, and habits of whales. 
Modern whaling, with the harpoon gun and the steam catcher, has 
expanded greatly in the twentieth century. It has provided not only 
the facilities but also the stimulus for research, for hunting on a large 
scale calls for regulation based on a knowledge of the distribution and 
migrations of the species, the reproductive capacity of the stock, and 
the nature of the populations of whales in different regions. It is 
with these subjects that the present article is principally concerned ; 
1 Reprinted by permission from Biological Reviews, vol. 21, No. 2, 1946. 
235 
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