UNDERSIZED WHALES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 19, 24 January 1939, Page 6

UNDERSIZED WHALES.

If a whale is shorter than 35ft he is a mere junior who should be permitted to continue swimming, blowing, eating plankton and growing up to man-siee before being harpooned and reduced to fertiliser, fkee cream, soap and grease. That is the law enforced in conformity with an international treaty to prevent extermination of the world's largest living mammals. Nursing mother whalfes also are protected by the law. To prevent evasion, the I'nited States Government sends, out an officer of the Coast Guard with each of the two "factory ship*" that, with their attendant '"killer boats," fly the American flag In the whaler fleet. Recently Coastguard Lieutenant T. It. Midtlyng returned aboard the "factory ship" Franco from a whaling season in Shark Bay, off West Australia, with a story t»| flagrant violation* of the code. Qf 017 whales that were killed by the modern bomb-loaded, mechanically barbed harpoons, he said* 81 were undersized and 27 were "cowi" that should have been left to nurse their young. The Coast Guardsman said that th« . crew*, mostly Norwegiah, made him a social outcast on the three-month trip because fie protested. ! He had his revenge when Federal officials book possession of the whaler in New York Harbour and prepared criminal prosecution. Control over "the whxle catch has been made necessary by modern methods of wholesale slaughter, a far cry from the hazardous harpoon throwing of the whalers who set out from Nantucket and New Bedford a century ago. Motored killer boats chase the Moby Dick's of to-day—whales of a siee that even the sfaunchest of old-time seafarers left alone. A swivel-mounted gun sends the harpoon into the whale ts body, where a bo/nb explodes three seconds after contact. A second bomtv harpoon usually finishes the job. /