THE WHALE AS A BROADCASTING STATION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 60, 30 March 1943, Page 5

THE WHALE AS A BROADCASTING STATION

During the last Avlialing season an interesting experiment Avas, tried out. It lias been known for some time that the radio connection between the. mother ship and the hunting boats is usually good enough to enable them to keep in touch with each other. The Norwegian hunter, Henrik Olsen, then discovered that radio could also be used for finding the position of a shot whale. As a rule a harpoon bearing the company's flag is thrust into the floating corpse of a whale so that the hunting boats majr easily spot it when the time comes for transporting it to the mother ship.- Henrik Olsen found out'that a better plan would be to install a small transmitter on the whale to enable the boats to pick up its whereabouts. A transmitter was constructed, not tnore than 20 inches high, 12 inches in diameter and 331b in weight, which was connected to a harpoon thrust, into the whale's body. This transmitter, together with batteries, was placed in a watertight container of rustless steel, the aerial was connected to the harpoon and a contact clock, automatically repeating every minute on the same Avavelenglh used by tlie ship, sent out the signal. Each company had its own signal so that one could tell not only the whale's position, but whose catch it