U.S. Back Again In Whaling Trade

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28457, 11 December 1957, Page 9

U.S. Back Again In Whaling Trade

(Specially written for the N.Z.P.A. by

FRANK OLIVERI

WASHINGTON, December 10. The romance of whaling is in the American news again. This time the object of the hunt is the sperm whale. American industry wants more sperm oil than it has been getting, and an American-Peruvian company has been formed to hunt the blunt-nosed mammal in the South Pacific. Not many years ago about the only use for sperm oil was for railway signal lamps, and electrification practically wiped out that use for it. Now it is needed for automatic motor s- car transmissions, for watches, for making face creams, printing ink, industrial detergents, and a dozen other things.

Foreign whaling expeditions have been bringing less and less sperm oil to America, and so the Archer-Daniel-Midlands Company, known as A.D.M., a landlocked company in the middle of America has invested 1,500,000 dollars in the project. The last of the great American whalers was the Charles Morgan, which hunted whales from 1841 to 1921 and is now anchored for ever at the Marine Museum at Mystic, Connecticut, and the last merchant ship to sail from America in the whaling business did so as long ago as 1938.

A handful of shore stations along the Californian coast still do a little whaling, and there are old salts in New England ports who did whaling in their youth. But in the last 30 years most of the whaling has been done by Norwegians, Britons and Dutchmen with the Japanese and Russians doing a little. However, they go mainly for blue whales and finbacks because they provide meat as well as oil. So A.D.M., a processor of agricultural products and fish oils, decided to catch its own sperms. It chartered expeditions to keep itself supplied with oil and has now bought a half interest in a Peruvian whaling company, the Cia Ballenera del Norte. Change in Methods The whaling methods of A.D.M. will differ widely from those of the old days. The Charles Morgan used to go out for between two and three years with a crew of about** 30 officers and men, kill whales, extract the oil and sail for home only when all the barrels were full. A.D.M. will have three killer ships armed with all the latest means of killing the maximum

inumber of whales in a given time land then towing them to a trel mendous shore station which | A.D.M. has established on the | coast of Peru. The killer ships will go to sea, harpoon whales and leave them {floating and finally, after killing ; a sizeable number, tow them all 'back to the shore station for processing. | This station is near where the Humboldt Current sweeps along the coast of South America, bringing whales fairly close to shore. The spot is desolate, but the company has built a factory, warehouses, living quarters for a staff of 100 men. and installed equipment for converting salt water into fresh. The decision of A.D.M. caused a certain amount of amusement in its headquarters town. Minneapolis. which is just about as far from the sea as one can get on the North American continent. But A.D.M. is picking up where American whaling history left off some 30 years ago. All this is. of course, a long way from the golden days of American whaling. In the middle 19th century as many as 650 ships sailed from New England porta on whaling expeditions. New Bedford alone had 400 ships in the industry. Then kerosene began to replace sperm oil and the great American whaling industry went into a rapid decline. A.D.M. is trying to put it back Into the picture and if its present adventure succeeds more ships are expected to go into the hunting of sperm whales as research finds more and more uses for the refined oil got from this 00-ton giant of the sea, offering some real competition to European whalers as they compete for the bigger share of the 14,000 odd whales which the Whaling Commission decrees may be killed each year.