WHALING INDUSTRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22325, 27 July 1934, Page 3

WHALING INDUSTRY

AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM Professor W. J. Dakin, professor of zoology at the' University of Sydney, in a recent address, said it would not be easy to draw up regulations preventing foreign companies from whaling in the Australian sector of the Antarctic outside the three-mile limit unless there was some kind of international agreement. He said that the Norwegian companies were again competing strenuously against each other, and there was nothing (o stop whaling ou a tremendous scale except the financial situation of the dif-

ferent countries that needed the oil. It had been found possible during the last few years to do many things with whale oil hitherto undreamt of. The development of the industry had had a curious effect ou trade in the tropics, for example. Companies which produced copra probably viewed with mixed feelings the success of whaling interests in the Antarctic, in view of the new uses to which whale oil was put. Those associated with trade in the tropics probably hoped either that the whale would “ fizzle out," or that some international restrictions would be placed upon whaling iu the Antarctic in the near future. Professor Dakin said that the pecuniary advantages of whaling on a large and successful scale to the personnel of a big whaling ship were great. If such

a vessel came back with whales to the value of, say, £500,000, one could readily imagine that the captain. of the ship, as the director of operations, was con* trolling a vast enterprise. It would not be surprising, in the circumstances, if his income for a year’s operations might be several thousands of pounds, and if an ordinary member of his crew made about £2OO. ,i.