WHALES AND THEIR HABITS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18947, 22 August 1923, Page 5

WHALES AND THEIR HABITS.

NEW DISCOYERT EXPEDITION. NEED FOR INVESTIGATION. (Fhom Odb Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 12. Reference is made by the scientific cone spondent of The Times to the coming expedition to the Antarctic. . It. .was recently announced by the Colonial Office that such an expedition was in contemplation for the purposo of studying the habits of whales, and that the Discovery, the vessel built for Captain Scott’s first expedition, had been bought from the Hudson’s Bay Company, i The question which it is hoped to xcsolyo by the work of the Discovery is whether or no Antarctic whaling is in danger ,of the fate which has overtaken northern fishing. In a single year as many as ten thousand whales were captured and brought in. The leaders of the industry' urge that these whales have enormous regions open to them, therefore the toll now taken in a restricted area cannot seriously affect their numbers. But Sir Sidney Harmer pointed out in "Nature” recently that there is no certainty on this point. Whales are migratory creatures, and on their circum-polar voyages in quest of food they must pass through the narrowest part of the Antarctic Ocean, in which South Georgia and the Shetlanda lie. The industry may be attacking not merely a small part of a widely distributed fauna, but the main body of the whales in the course of their migration. Only research can provide the facts on which the question of legal restriction must be determined. LEAST KNOWN MAMMALS.

“Right” or whalebone whales and tho toothed whales, including porpoises and dolphins (the correspondent points out) are the least known of existing mammals. It is not even certain if they are. common lineage, rightly placed, in . a single “order” of mammals, or if complete adaptation to a strictly aquatic life has not brought about a convergent resemblance between two groups of mammals as little related as, say, the elephant and the armadillo. Their place among the other orders of mammals is doubtful. Creatures like seals and walruses are clearly carnivorous land mammals that have taken to a marine life secondarily, and still betray their terrestrial origin in their structure and in their habit of coming ashore to breed. Whales are truly palagic, becoming stranded only by accident, conducting all their affairs, including courtship, birth, and rearing of the young, on tho high seas, and allowing in every detail of their structure so intimate a fitness for tho waters that they might almost be survivors from an epoch in which there was no advanced terrestrial life. Fossil history throws no light on the origin of the whalebono whales, and hardly does more than suggest a possible closer approach to the toothed, whales, although, indeed, the latter can bo traced back to more primitive and generaUsed creatures resembling the common ancestors of carnivores and insectivors. POINTS FOE INVESTIGATION. It is not even known if the whales found south of the equator, and given names by whalers identical with those of northern waters, belong to the same species. 'The rorquals, or “finners,” which comprise the most gigantic and swiftest of the whole order, are supposed by some authorities to visit all the seas in the course of cosmopolitan migrations, but by others it is suspected that were they _ more known specific differences would be discovered. Tho breeding places, probably in warmer waters, have yet to be ascertained, and there is uncertainty even about the food. Toothed whales for the most part hunt a larger prey,, pursuing and capturing fishes of all kinds. Whalebone whales swim open-mouthed along the surface, sifting the myriad and minuto floating life in their baleen plates, but some of them also capture fish. Sir S. Harmer, who as Director r* too Natural History Departments of the Britisa Museum, lias succeeded to the interest in whales taken by his predecessor, Sir William Flower, lias repeatedly called attention to the grave danger attending unrestricted whaling. The pursuit of the Atlantic right whale in the Bay of Biscay was active from the 12th century, but has now ceased on account of the practical extermination of the quarry. The Greenland right whale was pursued to exhaustion successively off Spitsbergen, 1 in the Davis Straits, and in the North Pacific and Behring Sea. The introduction_ of tha modern harpoon gun made it possible to attack tbe large and swift rorquals, and tho industry is now concerned, chiefly with ’ tha humpback, tbe fin, and the blue whale.. These have now been seriously reduced in northern waters, but since 1905 have been profitably attacked on tbe edge of the Antarctic ice.