THE DYING WHALE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3895, 28 April 1937, Page 9

THE DYING WHALE

WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER IN THE ANTARCTIC. KILLING ELABORATED. The Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire, which met at the London Zoo, heard from Dr Dilwyn John something about the Empire’s largest and most remote and probably its most distressful fauna—the Antarctic whales. At least they were once technically Empire fauna, for their dead bodies were brought to the factories at Soutli Georgia and other British possessions. But in the lest ten years, since the floating factories, instead of remaining at anchor began to follow the concentrations of whales at sea, the slaughter has spread from a small area south of the Falklands until whaling goes on tound three-quarters of the Antarctic Continent.

Some measure of control exists. The killing of calves and immature whales and of females accompanied by calves is forbidden. But the fact remains that in three years from 1927 onward the amount of whale oil taken out of the Antarctic was trebled. The means of killing have been elaborated—this year there is a 43,000 ton floating factory at work in the Antarctic—and 30,000 whales are being killed every year.

There are signs that the blue whale is being killed off. The average length of the whales caught in 1935 was about 80ft, which is less than it used to be, and is not much above the minimum length of whales capable of reproducing themselves. And a female whale only bears one calf every two years.

While this slaughter has been going on scientists have been finding out more about the whale than they ever knew before. The researches at South Georgia and on board the Discovery II and the William Scoresby are building up our knowledge of this mysterious creature’s harassed life. The scientists have found out, for instance that the blue whale lives entirely on a certain sort of prawn which frequents the Antarctic in shoals, and that this prawn lives on a certain marine vegetation, which in turn lives on certain salts in the sea. The result is that they can now pi-e--dict to some extent the concentrations of whales by testing the salt* - in the v ater. They also trace the winter migrations of whales to warmer waters by sjiooting numbered darts into them us ornithologists ring birds. The legends about the great age of whales are apparently untrue. A whale is old at 30. To judge by the statistics of whales killed, he & alii lucky. J