MONEY IN WHALES

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 12

MONEY IN WHALES

HUNTING DOWN SOUTH.

Our southern summer will be here presently, and already the whalers are preparing for the season “Down South,” The big 18,000 tons steamers —the floating factories —are being fitted out, and the little whale chasers overhauled. A record catch is expected this season, and the Ross Sea will be a hive of industry. New methods are to be tried this season for catching whales, writes G.R. in the Melbourne “Sun-Pictorial.” sln the old days, the sailing ship, with her boats and harpoons, leisurely destroyed the whale schools in the north in the course of a century. Then the chase came south, and now for five seasons, the whalers have been making large catches there. The old-time methods have long since gone, to be replaced by the gun, the explosive harpoon head, and the fast, steamer. The gun has given enormous accuracy, the explosive harpoon head is deadly, and the fast steamers cover the ground rapidly. But now yet newer and more destructive methods are to be applied. One is to fix a metal line to the harpoon, and when it has landed in the whale a strong electric current is sent along the line, causing immediate death. Thus, the cruelty of the explosive harpoon is avoided, and the whale’s great loss of blood before death prevented. There are two great whaling centres in the South, those about the Falkland Island, and that in the Ross Sea, due south of New Zealand. Every year for the past ten years, the whalers have taken an increasing number of whales, rising from an average catch of 10,000 per annum to 15,000 last year, with a total value of £6,000,000. The very success of whaling brings its own dangers, for there is grave fear that the new and modern methods employed, whereby more “fish” are caught in a week than used to be caught in a season, will destroy the whales faster than they breed. For two seasons the ship Discovery was employed on the whaling grounds, investigating the whole question —but her work has been temporarily interrupted to allow for Douglas Mawson’s expedition to proceed. An important part of the Discovery’s investigation consists in marking whales by discharging at them silver-plated discs, bearing a number, the date and the place where marked. These marks, when returned by the whalers catching the whale, throw light on the creature’s migrations and breeding habits. Another point is the effort being made to prevent the taking of undersized whales. If you kill a whale 100 feet in length you get twice as much oil as from an 80 feet whale, and therefore the killing of small whales is uneconomic. But the rich results which have been obtained in the past have attracted the attention of the British Government.

Five years ago the New Zealand Government declared a dependency over the whole of the Ross Sea, the Great Ice Barrier, and the Polar Plateau, right up to the very Pole itself, and demanded a royalty of 2/6 on every barrel of whale oil. The Norwegians paid this grudgingly at first, but recently they have become restive, asserting that . the whales are caught on the high seas, and that no Government has any territorial rights over such whales. The question is one which will have to be settled sooner or later. In view of the fact that the American expedition under Commander Byrd at the Bay of Whales, is camped on New Zealand territory, and proposes to explore that territory during the coming summer, international rights in the Antarctic will loom large in the near future.