AN IDEAL BASE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26713, 6 March 1948, Page 8

AN IDEAL BASE

ANTARCTIC WHALING FLEET PORT CHALMERS RECOGNISED EXCELLENT FACILITIES Port Chalmers would make an ideal base for an Antarctic whaling fleet, Captain Kurt Baglo, of the British whale-chaser Terje 3, told the Daily Times when his opinion was sought yesterday. 1 With a lifetime experience of the whaling industry, Captain Baglo immediately recognised Port Chalmers as an ideal base when he arrived from the Ross Sea. The proximity of Port Chalmers to the Ross Sea area, where most of the expeditions are operating because whales are more plentiful there, was favourably noted and. commented upon. The present base of a number of the whaling fleets, including that to which the Terje 3 is attached, is Capetown, but this base is a considerable distance further from the whaling area than Port Chalmers. The bases of the other whaling fleets are thousands of miles from the scene of operations. , , . .. The deep water and adequate berthing facilities were also in favour of Port Chalmers as a whaling base, Captain Baglo agreed. The large Otago dock, as well as the smaller Port Chalmers dock, together with the ship repair shops, are more suitable for a whaling fleet than those at Capetown and other recognised whaling bases. Only the smaller units of the whaling' fleets can be docked for repair or refurbish at Capetown. Whether New Zealand should engage in the Antarctic whaling industry was a subject which did not concern Captain Baglo. Neither was he prepared to suggest from where New Zealand should obtain a whaling fleet. A member of the crew of'one of the whalers at Port Chalmers smilingly offered the answer. . “Grab some of the Japanese ships as war reparations,” he suggested. The Japanese had two whaling expeditions in the Antarctic at present. They had been guilty of ruthless extermination of whales during the years before the recent war, and they had so far not been called on to make war reparations to New Zealand. That some, at least, of the vessels required by New Zealand for a whaling fleet to operate in the seas of her own dependency should come from Japan, seemed obvious, he said.