NEW WHALING VENTURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20252, 11 May 1929, Page 14

NEW WHALING VENTURE.

COMPANY IN AUSTRALIA. CAPITAL OF £750,000. Tho Australian Whaling Development Syndicate, Limited, has been registered in Sydney with the object of forming an Australian Company to engago in whaling on the Australian coast and in Antarctica. The company will have a capital of £750,000. , , .. Negotiations are well advanced for the purchase abroad of a steamer of 12.00U tons for conversion into a mother ship of tho type used by the Norwegians. Five whaling gunboats or chasers, which will operate with tho mother ship, are to be built in England It, is expected that the fleet will be commissioned in an Australian port in Juno next year, and that in the following October the first cruise will bo made to Antarctica. In tho months liilervcnincr, according to present plans, hunting will bo carried on along the Australian C °Tfi'o "key" men in the industry will be experienced Norwegians, but it is probable that a majority of tho crew and the factory hands will be Australians. In the hunting season many Australians ana New Zealanders aro employed on the Nonvogian whalers N. T. Nielsen Alonso, C. A. Larsen, and Sir James Clark Ross, which work from bases in Australasia. The creation of a shore station on the Australian coast is also being considered, ■and it is probablo also that with an assurance of large supplies of whale oil being forthcoming a number of subsidiary industries giving employment to several thousand peoplo will be established in tho Commonwoaltli. Blue whales will bo hunted in Antarctica, blue and sperm whales in sub-Antarctica, and humpbacks on tho Australian coast. Mr. D. G. Stead, who is connected with tho syndicate, said recently that liko Sir Douglas Mawson, ho regarded tho exploitation of tho wealth to the south of Australia as a national responsibility. The seas abounded in whales, and only tho fringe of Antarctic waters had yet been touched. One Norwegian whaler had "taken" more than £1,000,000 worth of oil in three cruises.