GIANTS OF THE DEEP

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 10, 7 October 1936, Page 16

GIANTS OF THE DEEP

Killer Whales and Their Prey LORE OF THE NORTHMEN He leaned over the whale-chaser’s tall and box-like bridge, a blonde bueeyed Viking, brown with going about the seas in all weathers of high lati- . tudes and low. His rusty, dingy, oceanbattered gips.V craft, her -picturesque calling proclaimed by the canvas-muf-fled harpoon-gun on the bow, and the barrel look-out at mast-head, lay moored beside the Aotea Quay, at Wellington. The Red Ensign flapped at her stern, but the man on deck was a descendant of that hardy race of whale-men-adveuturers whom Othere captain, 1100 years ago, told King Alfred he had found plying their hazardous avocation, away north of Stavenger and Bergen, even at that early date.

He was not unwilling .to converse awhile with an idler on the quay. “Can I tell you something about whales? Sure I can. I have lived with the whales,” he said. “I have been killing whales for, I think, 20 years, since I was just a small boy. Wherever the whales go, I have gone, too. “When I first went to sea, we did not haul the whales aboard ship to cut them up. Oh, no, it was not at all so easy 1 The flensers then, they had to climb down over the ship’s side, on to the dead whale as it floated in the sea. They cut the blubber off with spades; long strips of it were hoisted on board and tried out in great cauldrons on the ship’s deck. As they stripped one side, they rolled the whale over in the sea. Sometimes the waves came slopping over the carcase, and occasionally men were lost. “The blood in the water drew the sharks, and after we had been whaling in one place for a few days, they would gather in thousands. You never saw so many sharks! Thousands! All the time the men were flensing the whale, they were tearing at it under the water. The Grampus. “And sharks aren’t the only things that eat whale, I can tell you. -Have you ever heard of a killer-whale, what .sailors call a grampus? There’s a common saying at sea ‘puffing like a grampus.’ That’s because when the grampus comes to the top of the water to breathe, he lets out his breath like a man gtjbping for wind. These killers are about 15 to 25 feet long. You can easily pick them by their high knife-blade fins- oh their backs, and. their colour, yellow and black, piebald. “These killers hunt in packs. I’ve seen as many as 20 together, but it s mostly four or five. They’ll eat anything—seals, porpoises, whales. In the old days they sometimes went for the boats, but they say that in Australia, at Twofold Bay, there was a pack that used to hunt with the whalemen, and help to drive the whales into shallow water. Of course, in those days we didn’t use the whole carcase so they got a good meal. “Sure, they can kill whales for themselves. Two or three jump out of the water, flopping on to the whale’s back when he rises to blow. By falling thump on his nostril, they keep him from drawing a fair breath to dive. At the same time the others fasten on to his lower lip and pull his mouth open, so that they can tear his tongue out.

“They find whale tasty, and I don’t wonder. Yes, I’ve eaten whale. Just like beef, without much flavour. If you weren’t told, you’d never take it for whale at all. In Japan it’s looked on as a first-class food, and so it is. But I dare say you'd get very sick of it if you ate it regularly. “You know, there are a great many kinds of whale. These ones you get down here, humpbacks, are only little fellows, 45 or 50 feet long at most. Well, the blue whale runs up to more than 100 feet. He’s our best whale for oil, and he’s -the biggest thing that lives. You can estimate the weight of a whale as a ton to the foot, roughly. So the blue whale weighs about as much as 20 elephants, and you know how big they are. Restrictions on Killing.

“The fin whale is the next biggest. The blue whale’s blue-grey all over, but the finback is white underneath. He runs up to about 80 feet. By whaling law, you can’t kill a finback under 40 feet, or a blue whale under 60. The gunner is supposed to be docked his pay for shooting one, and the same if he shoots a calf whale, or a cow with a calf, or a right whale. “The right whale used to be the favourite killing whale at one time, and that’s how he got his name. You couldn’t see much of the whale in the old row-boats, until you came in close;, and, of course, if it was the wrong sort, after the men had nearly broken their backs with pulling after him, it’d fair break their hearts. So as soon as the harpooner saw the whale clearly, he would shout, ‘lt’s a right whale!’ ‘meaning it wasn’t a wrong one. You can tell them by their flat backs and colour, and the size and shape of their flippers. ■’’But there’s another sort of whale they catch in the Arctic, that you won’t ever seen down here. It’s called the narwhal, which means the nosewhale. It’s about 20 feet long and spotted like a plum pudding, and on its nose it has what looks like a horn, but it’s really a tooth, all of a fathom long. That long, straight spike is made of a single piece of twisted ivory, and it’s worth about £l5. The narwhal uses ’it for knocking a hole in the ice, so that he can still breath when the surface is frozen over. But the natives in those parts, the Esquimaux, see the spike sticking up through the ice, and when he comes up a second time they harpoon him. “Yes, there’s no doubt you see a lot of things if you go about the sea. But it doesn’t do you much good. I’m not a millionaire yet, and I’ve been at it 20 years. I’m sick of it all. When I get back to Norway I’ll buy a pretty little farm, within sight of the sea, and get married, and. ..” He broke off and gazed moodily at the masthead, whence the mocking laughter of a seagull, interrupting him, expressed a world of disbelief.