102 THE FISHING INDUSTRY 



Southern seas, and is killed in large numbers for the sake 

 of the spermaceti and sperm oil that occur in large 

 quantities in its head cavity. Sperm and other toothed 

 whales feed upon fish and cuttlefish. 



The breeding habits and migrations of the different 

 species of whales are at present little understood. 

 During the summer, when the water in the Polar circles 

 swarms with certain varieties of pelagic Crustacea, the 

 whales congregate in these regions and are then 

 most profitably hunted. At the end of the summer 

 they appear to migrate towards warmer water nearer the 

 Equator. They bring forth their young in warm, shallow 

 water, and return to the whaling grounds in the spring. A 

 young whale calf may be as much as 20 ft. long at birth. 



Whales were captured by the Norwegians over 1,000 

 years ago. In the Middle Ages from the ninth to the 

 seventeenth centuries the Basques hunted the Black 

 whale in the Bay of Biscay, and supplied Europe with 

 oil and whalebone. Towards the end of the sixteenth 

 century, as the Biscay whales became rare and more 

 difficult to find, the whalers ventured further afield, and 

 in 1612 discovered the Greenland whale. The Black 

 or Biscay whale is now almost extinct, and there is every 

 likelihood that the Greenland Right whale will also 

 soon be exterminated. The capture of Sperm and 

 Rorqual whales, although equally important, is a 

 comparatively modern development. 



Modern whale fishing has become a very efficient art, 

 owing largely to the invention of the shot-harpoon by 

 a Norwegian, Sven Foyn, in 1870. This harpoon is 

 discharged from a gun from the deck of a fast steamship. 

 It penetrates the body of the whale in the vital region 

 just behind the flipper. The invention of this weapon 

 has made the killing of whales a matter of comparative 

 ease and certainty. The inevitable consequence of this 



