NATURE NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 34, 8 August 1925, Page 13

NATURE NOTES

WHALES AND DOLPHINS

A BLACKFISH AT SINCLAIR HEAD

(By R. H. D. Stidolph. EJLO.V.J

Most people are aware that the whal^ ii a mammal, but why is it not a fish! Far the sake of those who are not well versed in the fact* of comparative anatomy, it may b» convenient to staU! briefly a few main reasons for placing the whale »mnwg the mammalia, and not among the fish, but alto in a position remote from all other groups of vertebrated .animals—that ii amphibia, reptiles, and birds. A whale is a hoiblooded creature, breathing -by means of lungs, which lie "in the interior of the body in a definite chest cavity, shut off from the rest of the cavity of the body by a largely muscular partition— the diaphragm. It frequently has vestiges of the hairs which cover the bodies of other mammals in the presence of a few scattered hairs in the neighbourhood of the mouth. It brings forth its young alive and suckles them with milk, and the bones of the skull are precisely thoee of other mammals and only differ slightly in their relative arrangement. These characters are quite sufficient for the present purpose. The stranding of a whale in former times excited much interest among the populace. It may be interesting to read of the occurrence of a whale many years ago, near London, as recorded by John Evelyn in his diary: "A large whale was taken betwixt my land butting om the Thames and Grenewich, which, drew aa-infinite concourse to see it, by water, horse, coach, and on foot, from London and all parts. It appeared first below Greenewich at low water,; for. at high water it would have destroyed all the boates, but lying now in shallow water inobmpassed with boats, after a long conflict it was Mv" a d with a . harping yron, struck in the head, out of which spouted blood and water by two tunnells, and after a horrid grone it ran quite on shore and died. Its length was fifty-eight foot, heighth-sixteen; black skinn'd like coach leather, verysmall eyes, greate taile, onely two small finns, a picked snout, and a mouth so wide that divers men might have stood upright in it; no teeth, but sucked sfime onely as thro' a grate of that boner-which we call whalebone, tba throat* yet so narrow as would not hava admitted the least of fishes. The extreames of the' cetaceous bones hang downewards from the upper jaw, and was hairy towards the ends and bottom, within side; all of it prodigious, but in nothing more wonderfull than that an animal of so great a bulk should b» nourished only by slime thro' those grates." \ .: ........

At present then, is a Tasmanian blackfish stranded at Sinclair Head.. This specie* is. suppose to be of rara occurrence in New Zealand, but as it may be easily, confuted with the com. mon bl&ckfish, it may bo more common than is presumed. A large school was stranded at the Chatham Islands about 1907. The common blackfish, like this dolphin, also goes about in large schools, and is found in all seas. Mr. W. R. B. Oliver, of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, contributed a paper on the "Whales and Dolphins of New Zealand" to the New Zealand "Journal of Science and Technology." Mr. Oliver, In the course of his paper, .states that much more knowledge about the cetacea of our seas is urgently needed, and it Is hoped that anyone finding a stranded cetacean would forward a description or a photograph to the nearest museum, as possibly by that action a skeleton of a rare species may be procured. The cetaoea naturally fall into two orders—those which have no, functional teeth, but instead are provided with numerous plates of baleen, or ■whalebone, and those provided with, teeth. Within the New Zealand area there have been observed seven species of baleen whales and twenty of toothed whales, this latter order including tltio dolphins and porpoises. ■ The . right whale is commercially the most valuable of whales, and formerly, was abundant in the seas surrounding New Zealand, but Is now seldom seen. Very few specimens of the pygmy right whala have been stranded on the coast. Ifc differs from the right whale in having a dorsal fin, and in its much smaller size, twenty feet being about its maximum length._ The ungainly-looking humpback is quite the most common of whales Inhabiting the New Zealand seas; in f#ct, it is found plentifully in all portions of the world. It attains a length of about fifty feet, and its characteristic long flippers reach about fourteen feet. It is this species that is hunted at Whangamumu, near the Bay of Islands, Tory Channel, in the Marlborough Sounds, and Kaikoura, at which places whaling stations are established. Altogether about 90 ■whales are captured each season. The blua whale is the largest species, and the now famous Okaritd specimen, the skoleton of which is in the.Canterbury Museum, measured eighty-seven feet in total length, and,. Mr. Oliver states, sundry statements notwithstanding, no bigger animal than this has actually been measured. Only two authentic records of its occurrence in New Zealand, ara known. Reeso's dolphin, a solitary animal, is found in most seas; the famou* 'Tfclorus Jack" was a specimen of this species.

The economic products of whales arcj several. The flesh of the cooing whale is utilised by. the inhabitants of tha Orkneys as food, and that of various other whales is eaten, but it is not aa article of at all general consumption. The bones as well as the flesh can bo and are utilised, in the case of stranded whales, for manure; and the vibs hav(j been used at various times and by--dif-ferent peoples to build. huts. • The bit' of whales is derived from the blubber, which forms a thick coating immediate* ly underlying 1 the skin. Besides, there 1 is in many whales, especially in thej sperm whale, which on rare occasions comes ashore on the New Zealand coa«t usually in schools, and is distinguishable) by its huge truncate head, a, certain amount of clear oil contained In the; head, which is solid ■when cold and is known as spermaceta. The whalebone! whales start life "" with rudimentary teeth, which ultimately disappear oa the appearance of the whalebone. The general character of whalebone re* sembles that of horns or hair. Th» col. our is black, white, or brown. Th* whalebone i» formed at the roof of th« mouth, and the plates are triangular in shape, the base of attachment being broader than the lower, free extremity. The plates are arranged in a direction transverse to the long axis of the-mouth and are very numerous, as many as \ three hundred and seventy having beea counted. The outside of the blades, that turned towards the lips, is straight and hard; the inner side is frayed out into innumerable hait-lika processes. The whol© apparatus forms an efficient strainer. The fine hafru entangle the minute creatures on which the whale feeds, and at the same time allow thf water to es««p«.