Vol. XXII, No. 5 



WASHINGTON 



May, 191 1 



TTIHIIS 



NATIONAL 

 ©(SIMM! 

 MASAZUMB 



0 



SHORE-WHALING: A WORLD INDUSTRY 



By Roy Chapman Andrews 

 Assistant Curator of Mammals, Amkrican Museum of Natural History 



With Photographs by the Author 



IF THE European and American 

 people could be educated to the 

 point of eating the canned flesh of 

 animals which individually yield as much 

 as 80,000 pounds of meat, what a won- 

 derful food supply would be within 

 reach of the poor in our great cities! 

 In Japan this has actually been accom- 

 plished and hundreds of tons of whale 

 flesh are sold in the markets of all the 

 large towns and villages to people who 

 would otherwise have little variety to 

 their diet of rice and fish. 



This great meat supply has been put 

 into their hands indirectly by a Nor- 

 wegian, for it was not until 1864, when 

 Swend Foyn invented the harpoon-gun, 

 that whales could be taken in such a 

 manner as to allow any parts except the 

 oil and baleen (the "whalebone" of com- 

 merce) to be utilized. 



With the further development of the 

 harpoon-gun grew up a new and great 

 industry, for it made possible the capture 

 of a group of whales known as rorquals, 

 or "Antiers," in sufficient numbers to war- 

 rant the erection of stations at certain 

 points on the shore where the animals 

 could be brought in and the huge car- 

 casses converted into commercial prod- 



ucts. Previously these whales had been 

 little troubled by the men who hunted 

 in a small boat with a hand harpoon and 

 lance, for the great speed of the animals 

 and their tendency to sink as soon as 

 killed, as well as their thin blubber and 

 short, coarse baleen, made them unpopu- 

 lar with the early whalers. 



In a few years stations had sprung 

 up on the coasts of Norway in every 

 available place, and later reached across 

 the Atlantic to the American shores. 

 Newfoundland became the first hunting 

 grounds for the whalers here, and only 

 a few years ago as many as 18 stations 

 were in operation on that island and the 

 immediate vicinity. 



The great success of the Norwegian 

 methods attracted so much attention that 

 stations were erected in every part of 

 the world where conditions were favor- 

 able — in British Columbia, southeastern 

 Alaska, Bermuda, South America, and 

 the islands of the Antarctic ; on the 

 coasts of Japan, Korea, Africa, and 

 Russia. Australia is soon to be invaded, 

 and only a few months ago a company 

 announced their plans for carrying on 

 operations on a large scale in the Aleu- 

 tian Islands. In New Zealand, hump- 



