DISCOVERY INVESTIGATIONS 

 OBJECTS, EQUIPMENT AND METHODS 



PART I. THE OBJECTS OF THE INVESTIGATIONS 



By Stanley Kemp, Sc.d. 



THE proposal to send a scientific expedition to Antarctic waters was initiated by 

 Mr E. R. Darnley, Chairman of the present Discovery Committee, rather more than 

 ten years ago. The proposal had in view the systematic exploration of all the economic 

 resources of the Dependencies of the Falkland Islands, but the main reasons for it are 

 to be traced to the very rapid development of the whaling industry in those Dependencies, 

 and to the fears which arose that this industry, like others formerly existing in both 

 northern and southern hemispheres, would prove shortlived. For this reason the in- 

 vestigations undertaken bear mainly on the bionomics of the whales upon which the 

 industry is based. The desirability of executing coastal surveys in the interests of the 

 vessels which navigate these dangerous and largely uncharted waters was also realized. 



Antarctic whaling by modern methods owes its origin to the Norwegian whaling 

 pioneer, the late Captain C. A. Larsen, for it was due entirely to his enterprise and 

 pertinacity in the face of much discouragement that operations were first begun at South 

 Georgia in the season 1904-5. The venture was immediately successful: in the next 

 season a whaling factory under Mr Alexander Lange, also a Norwegian, visited the 

 South Shetland Islands, and by 191 2 twenty-one whale-catching vessels were employed 

 at South Georgia and thirty-two in the South Shetlands. Further development was 

 restricted by Government action in the fear that the stock of whales would be unduly 

 depleted, but during the war period a temporary increase was permitted. 



From the first it was evident that a whaling field of the greatest importance had been 

 discovered in the Dependencies of the Falkland Islands ; before many years had passed 

 it proved more productive than all those in the rest of the world combined and, until 

 the present day, this leading position has been maintained. 



The history of whaling in other waters, for nearly all the species which have formed 

 the object of commercial enterprise, has followed one and the same lamentable course.^ 

 At first there is a period of great abundance, during which the industry develops 

 rapidly and large profits are made. This, after a longer or shorter period, is followed 

 by a decline which may be equally rapid, and culminates finally in the complete cessa- 

 tion of operations. Such has been the history of the Atlantic Right Whale or Nordkaper 

 and of the Greenland Whale, species which have been hunted to the verge of extermina- 

 tion, while the northern rorqual fisheries, which have been conducted for little more 

 than half a century, have declined to a mere vestige of their former greatness. 



1 For an authoritative history of whaling see Sir Sidney Harmer, Proc. Linn. Sue. London, session 140, 

 PP- 52-95. 1928. 



143 



