WHALE FISHERIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15884, 3 April 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

WHALE FISHERIES.

A paper of exceptional interest, from a commercial as well as from a natural history point of view, is the account of the whalf fisheries, of the Falkland Islands and Dependencies, contributed by Mr. Theodore E. Salvesen, F.R.S.E., Leith, to the report on the scientific results of the 1 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition. The paper briefly recounts the history of the whaling industry in the Antarctic seas, since its first institution early in the eighteenth century. In the first hall of last century as many as 500 to 600 wooden sailing vessels were employed in the Southern Hemisphere hunting Cachelot and Southern Right whales. As the result of tlie fall in the price of oil and baleen, increased working expenses and smaller catches, this class of whaler is now practically unknown in the Antarctic regions. In 186b a new era in Southern whale fishing was inaugurated by a Norwegian, Captain Svend Foyn, who solved the problem of the successful capture of the Finner whales that abound 111 these seas by the application of devices that overcame the difficulty arising from the tendency of this whale to sink when harjiooned, and who thus led the way to the development of the modern steam whale-catcher, which in form and size and method of pursuit and capture "differs in every essential" from the typical South Sea whaler of over a decade ago. The pioneer of the later phase of this Antarctic industry was Captain Larsen, of Sandefiord, in Norway, who, impressed by the enormous number of Finner whales he saw on his Antarctic voyages in 1892 and 1893, became founder of the Argentine Fishery Company of Buenos Aires, and made his first whaling expedition to South Georgia in 1904, with such satisfactory results that the Falkland Islands and dependencies are now the seat of " the largest whaling business in the world." Altogether, over twenty whaling companies, mostly Norwegian, are operating in the groups lying south of the Falklands, and although these islands are now all under the British flag, only three companies —two of them Leith and one North Shields— British. During the season 1912-13 the catch of twenty-one steam whalers operating at South Georgia was about 5000 whales, of which about 52 per cent. Humpbacks, 42 per cent. Finners, and six per cent. Blue whales, the yield of the catch being 200,000 barrels of oil and 8000 tons of whale guano. The South Shetlands and Graham Land, worked by 32 whalers, also yielded about 500 whales, the South Orkneys 800, and the Falklands only 87. The total production of the season was about 430.000 barrels of oil—more than half the world's output— and 8375 tons of guano, the gross value being about i 11,350,000 sterling. The industry gives employment to about 3500 men, composing the crews of the whaling and transport vessels and working at the factories afloat and on shore.