SLUMP IN WHALING.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 379, 22 March 1932, Page 7

SLUMP IN WHALING.

Quiet Season in the Antarctic. BIG FLEET LAID UP. The whales of the Antarctic seas have enjoyed the first quiet season in many years. Few keels have crossed the grey waste of southern waters and the most enormous whaling fleet ever seen, has, with the exception of only a few units, been laid up at its heme ports. This “ close ” season has not been ordered by the Governments controlling the whaling areas and there has been no tightening up on the licenses which New Zealand issues for firms following the industry in the Ross Sea dependency. The “ close ” season has followed a record year, when 37,000 whales were caught and the market flooded, with the result that a million barrels of oil were unsold. Another result of this glut was the tremendous fall in copra prices and a resulting depression which spread over the whole of the South Sea Islands. The world’s whaling fleet consists of 33 factory ships, many of them over 10,000 tons, 190 whale catchers arid five oil transport ships, in all 350,000 tons of shipping. Although the Norwegian whaling companies agreed among themselves that the exploitation in previous years had been overdone, three companies sent ships down into the Antarctic this year. The Southern Whaling Company, controlled by the great soapmaking firm of Lever Bros., sent out two 12,000-ton ships, with 16 small whale catchers, to operate in the Enderby Land region where the Mawson Expedition was engaged last year. Another firm sent three factory shijis with attendant whale catchers, and an Argentine firm dispatched two floating refineries to work to the south and east of Cape Horn. The total whaling fleet in the Antarctic during the past season, described officially as a “ close season,” was therefore seven factory ships and 40 catchers, instead of the full fleet of 45 ships and 200 catchers. Discovery H. Meanwhile, the British survey ship, Discovery 11., continues her work, investigating the habits and breeding of whales, about which very little is yet known. Nobody knows, for example, to what age whales live or why, though they live only on microscopic Crustacea, they attain such a great size. In the course of her researches, the Discovery 11. is expected to make a complete circumnavigation of the Antarctic, calling at Cape Town, Fremantle and Wellington in the course of her long voyage. The effect of this close season, which has been forced upon the companies, will in the end be of great advantage to the industry. At the rate whales have been killed during the past decade, it would not be long before the danger of extinction would have compelled the Governments controlling the whaling seas to prohibit whale fishing, as, some years ago, they did sealing.