WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12801, 24 July 1939, Page 2

WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

WIRELESS AND WHALES ■ Great changes have come over the whaling industry since, the days of which Herman Melville wrote in Moby Dick. Whale hunting is still difficult and dangerous, and the men who engage in it have every need to be well and strong, with nerves of steel and muscles like whipcords. But some of the old thrill has gone. Science _ has come to the whaler’s help just as it has come to the help of many other people, and whaling to-day can never be quite so dangerous as it was in the olden days. of sailing ships.

Every October a fleet of about thirty-five whaling ships and something like 250 “catcher” ships flying flags of six nations, sail for the Antarctic to take part in the annual whaling expedition. The killing of whales is now under international control, for it has been realised that if those wonderful and useful giants of, the sea are not to be exterminated, only a small portion of them must be destroyed. For all that, the whaling fleet which now visits the Antarctic once a year may easily account for 30,000 whales, bringing back no less than about 100 or 120 million gallons of whale oil. '

For some years the method adopted by the whaling captains has been that of harpooning and killing a whale, planting a flag on the carcase, and then going after other whales if they are still in sight. But sometimes the, dead whales are difficult to find, and now and then one of these valuable prizes is . lost,. Here science is coming to the aid of the whalers, and this year for the first time, the fleet is carrying supplies of small wireless transmitters which will be placed on the dead whales while chase is given elsewhere. The transmitters will continue to send out signals at regular intervals, and by means of direction-finders it will be possible to locate the whales without loss of time.