THE FISHING INDUSTRY 



carries a harpoon gun in order to make sure of the 

 first harpoon getting a good hold. 



In Rorqual fishing, off Newfoundland, the harpoon is 

 tipped with a bomb and time fuse. This explosive 

 harpoon is discharged into the whale from the deck of the 

 whaler a fast steamer and explodes with fatal effect. 

 The chief whale fisheries are carried on off Greenland 

 for the Greenland whale, off the coast of Newfoundland 

 for Rorquals. There is the Norwegian bottlenosed- 

 whale fishery around Iceland, and the American Bow- 

 head- whale fishery in the Behring Sea. In Southern Seas 

 the Humpback, Fin whale, and Blue whale (Sibbald's 

 Rorqual) constitute an overwhelming majority of the 

 whales captured. The Right whale and the Sperm 

 whale, although captured in relatively small numbers, 

 are individually more valuable. Other smaller species, 

 e.g. the Sei whale (Rudolph's Rorqual), the lesser 

 Rorqual and the Killer or Grampus, are also found in 

 large numbers in the Antarctic. 



When the whale has been killed it is either made fast 

 alongside the whaler and cut up, or it is towed ashore 

 to a " factory " to be cut up and stripped. The blubber 

 is stripped off, cut up into small pieces, and boiled down 

 with water to separate the oil. The yield of oil varies 

 for different species, as shown in Table II. The whale- 

 bone is removed and, if a Sperm whale, the oil is removed 

 from the skull cavity with buckets. An average large 

 Sperm whale will yield from 2| to 3 tons of Sperm oil. 

 TABLE II 



Average Yield of Oil in Barrels 

 Species of Whale. (6 Barrels = 1_ Ton). 



Right 



Blue 



Fin 



Sei 



Humpback 



Sperm 



60 to 70 

 70 80 

 35 50 

 10 15 

 25 ,, 35 

 60 ,, 65 



