22 A HISTORY OF THE WHALE FISHERIES 



This statement is, however, not strictly correct, 

 since the White Whale or Beluga (Delphinapterus 

 leucas) was fished for by the early English whalers 

 at Spitsbergen, but not by the Dutch. 1 



It was described under the name of " Sewria " by 

 Thomas Edge in 1609. The White Whales were 

 captured in the bays by nets or driven ashore by the 

 same means. In 1670 there is a record of a 

 Greenland ship arriving in Yarmouth Roads with 

 " about twenty-four tons of oil made from white- 

 fish." 2 The Russian trappers, who frequented 

 Spitsbergen in the nineteenth century, were provided 

 with long nets which they used in such places as 

 Cross Road and Green Harbour, for the capture of 

 White Whales in the event of a school approaching 

 their station in the open season of the year. 3 



In the first place, are whales to be considered 

 as coastal or deep-sea animals? According to 

 Vanhoffen 4 whales are generally seen in coastal or 

 bank areas and rarely in the open ocean or deep 

 sea ; the reason being that they find more abundant 

 food in the former localities. Recent information as 

 to the distribution of plankton (the floating organ- 

 isms which form the food of the Whalebone Whales) 

 shows that it is found much more abundantly over 

 the continental shelf and shallow banks than over 



Miiller, " Fish and Fisheries," Prize Essays, International 

 Fisheries Exhibition, Edinburgh, 1883. 



1 Zorgdrager. Bloyende Opkomst,, ist edition, p. 162. 



3 State Papers, Domestic, 1660-70, p. 433. 



3 Conway, " No Man's Land," p. 255. 



* Anat. Anz., Bd. xxii., 1899, p. 396. 



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