WHALE HUNTING WITH GUN AND CAMERA 



floating factories which until recently operated with- 

 out restriction and are the most pernicious agencies 

 of modern invention in the wholesale destruction of 

 whales. 



A floating factory consists of a large steamer 

 equipped with blubber try works and can be moved 

 about from place to place as the feeding grounds 

 change. Four or ve_^essels hunt from each floating 

 factory, supplying it with whales from which the 

 blubber is stripped off and tried out on board the 

 large ship. 



When operations first began in the sub-Antarctic, 

 whales could be killed so easily that in some instances 

 only the thickest portions of the blubber were taken 

 and the remainder left upon the carcass to be turned 

 adrift; thus but a fractional portion of the value of 

 each whale was secured while thousands of animals 

 were killed. ACblue whale eighty feet long, treated 

 in this manner, would probably not be worth more 

 than $40 or $50, while in Japan, where the by-products 

 are highly utilized, a specimen of equal size would have 

 a value of $4,000. 



Very fortunately at South Georgia, one of the 

 largest whaling centers of the far southern waters, 

 the British Government realized that such pernicious 

 activities could only result in the quick ruin of the 

 industry, and enacted laws which compelled the float- 

 ing factories to use the carcasses as well as the 

 blubber. 



While to the early hunters on the South Atlantic 

 grounds the supply of whales must have seemed in- 



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