678 • 



NATURE 



[February 18, 1915 



WHALING IN SOUTHERN SEAS. 



MR. THEODORE E. SALVESEN makes a 

 very interesting" report ^ on the whale 

 fisheries of the Falkland Islands and dependencies. 

 Whaling in southern seas began, he tells us, 

 with the eighteenth century, the first British fleet 

 of twelve vessels sailing- in 1725. They went 

 after sperm whales or cachalots {Physetcr macro- 

 cephalus) and southern right whales [Balaena 

 ausiralis), which were harpooned from rowing- 

 boats. In the first half of the nineteenth century 

 there were as many as 500—600 whalers so em- 

 ployed — wooden sailing ships, complete in them- 

 selves, the blubber being rendered into oil on 



physalns), to the small fish whale (B. horealis), 

 and to the humpback whale {Megaptera boops) — 

 all of them often called "finners. " As they are 

 more active than the sperm whale and the right 

 whale and only awash for a very short time when 

 breathing, and as they sink after being killed, 

 they were left entirely unmolested in the old days. 

 But now their turn has come. 



It was a Norwegian captain, Svend Foyn, who 

 worked out, in the north, about 1866, the method 

 of capturing finner whales, and his devices, with 

 improvements, are now in use by all the modern 

 whaling companies. Tbegfciffile-catcher is worked 

 by steam, not by memwBEroars ; the whale gun 

 is a finely fashioned ca^W; the harpoon carries 



Floating factory S.S. Restitution of North Shields, Possession Bay, South Georgia. From " Report on the Scientific Results of the Scottish N'ational 



Antarctic Expedition." 



board. But this kind of vessel is now practically 

 unknown, its place having been taken by the 

 modern steam whaler; and the venue has chang-ed, 

 in the far south at any rate, from sperm whale 

 and right whale to the finners. The sperm whale 

 is seldom met with in the waters round the 

 Falkland Islands and dependencies, its normal 

 habitat being in warmer zones, and the southern 

 right whale is no longer specially sought after, 

 since the price of baleen has fallen so low. Thus 

 attention has been directed to the blue whale 

 {Balaenoptera sibhaldii), the largest living- animal 

 in the world, to the finner whale (B. muscuhis or 



1 "Scientific Results Scottish National Antarctic Expedition," iv. (1914) 

 pp. 475-486, 10 p'at«« and map. 



NO. 2364, VOL. 94] 



a shell, the whale line is connected with springs 

 or accumulators ; if the whale be not mortally 

 wounded the gunner plays it as an angler his 

 salmon ; to keep the carcase afloat it is inflated 

 with air by means of a steam air-pipe from the 

 engine-room ! Everything^ is specialised. And 

 another difference as compared with old days is 

 that the reduction of the carcase is accomplished 

 in a factory on shore or in a larg-e vessel (up to 

 7000 tons) moored in a harbour. 



Besides the baleen, which no longer pays well 

 or at all, and the oil which is graded into qualities 

 according as it comes from the blubber, the fat of 

 the tongue and kidneys, the flesh and bones, and 

 the refuse, there remains the dried flesh and bones. 



