THE ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALE 
The colour is entirely black. 
During the Middle Ages this was a common species in the Bay of 
Biscay and English Channel, and westwards was plentiful in the Atlantic 
round the coasts of Newfoundland. Later on, it became increasingly 
scarce in its old haunts, and towards the middle of last century and for 
some time later, appeared to be almost extinct. However, between 1889 
and 1891 about seventeen were taken by the Norwegian whalers off 
Iceland, and as already mentioned sixty-seven were captured and brought 
to the Scottish stations between 1908 and 19 14. 
Professor D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson has shown in his interesting 
account of the whales landed at these ports {Scottish Naturalist, Sept. 1918, 
pp. 204-205), that nearly all the Nordcapers were brought into 
Buneaveneader, having been " caught within a limited area lying to the 
west and south-west of the Hebrides and beyond St. Kilda, as far as 
about 10° W. None have been taken on the Rockall grounds and very 
few in the neighbourhood of the Shetlands." Right Whales, separated 
from the Atlantic Right Whale by differences so slight as to make them 
appear identical, inhabit the South Atlantic as well as the North and 
South Pacific. 
The pursuit of the Nordcaper can be traced far back in the Middle 
Ages, and appears to have been first carried on by the Basques in the 
Bay of Biscay, along the coasts of France and Spain, when the whale 
hunters were able to bring in their captures to Bayonne, Biarritz, San 
Sebastian and other ports. 
In course of time, the whales becoming scarce near shore, they were 
followed across the Atlantic as far as the coast of Newfoundland, where 
an extensive fishery was carried on. 
These Biscayan Whalers were fine intrepid seamen, skilful in the 
use of the weapon they invented, which still bears the name they gave 
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