KILLING WHALES

Hokitika Guardian, 8 September 1931, Page 6

KILLING WHALES

A RUTHLESS INDUSTRY.

PICTURE OF -ANTARCTIC SLAUGHTER,

The author of “Whaling in the Antarctic”—Mr A. G. Bennett—lives in the Falkland Islands, and has voyaged considerably in the Antarctic, even to the circum-Polar coast, but he does not appear to be interested in his personal adventures, He himself is not its subject, writes H. M. 'Tomlinson, in the London Observer. Mr Bennett tells us little of his own mind wvhen taking part iin a whale hunt, but we. fancy his sympathy is with the whale, and though he respects the hardihood of whalemen, and is even astonished by their endurance in circumstances which would wash the' gilt right off the near prospect of a million sterling—that is, to the view of any rational mart—yet. the romance of whaling merely make’? him shrug his shoulders. The pursuit of the whale to him does not suggest men’s heroic purpose and doom, as it did to Melville, nor an opportunity, as • ill the case of Bulleh, for satisfying our curiosity, ana our ability to take' in the incredible; his chief wonder seems to be that so much remarkable skill and. courage should be expended in a' region where a cheerful life—-except to penguinS-Lis impossible and for the benefit of distant shareholders who wouldn’t know a 'Rorqual from a Spern. The poor beasts only possess one desire—-to escape, and they have no means of defence whatever against their human" ‘persecutors. . . • The

sight‘of a great whale wallowing in a crimson sea, and at the same time blowing his life-blood in scarlet fountains through his nostrils, is one of the things one would like, if one could, to forget; but the vivid and terrible picture is graven indelibly ,on the memory, defilng those wide spaces of pure air, pure ice, and pure water, in which it took place. ,200,030 WHALES DESTROYED. The Right whale of the Greenland fishery is now almost extinct ; the Spern is so reduced in numbers that its organised slaughter is no longer' worth our money. The Blue and Fin whales, which migrate to feeding grounds in Antarctic seas, an uiiviolable sanctuary because of dangers and distance, until shore stations, motor-ships, harpoonguns and specially designed whale sh ps invaded- the solitude, are now the speens hunted—the Blue is the greatest of the whales, and the Fin the fastest—and 200,000 of them have been destroyed there this century, according to Mr Bennett.

Mr Bennett is not-a humanitarian; he is an impartial witness with a plain but a vastly interesting' story, and if vhat is horrible happens to be about, he puts that in just as he does the mloui's of the ice and the sea at sundown ; he declares that never in the tropics has he seen such remarkable displays of light. Nevertheless, there are long periods when a low canopy of loud shuts down on that desolate world, and the gloom, cold, and silence at the end of the earth there badly affect the men who are looking anxiously' for ah jpportunity. to explode a bomb.

THE WHALER’S RIVAL. There is an animal called the Orca,, >r 'Killer. It is a toother whale, it is swift, it hunts in schools, and it fears nothing. As it may be 30 feet long, it.s, with one exception, the .most terrible of carnivores. The whalemen hate it. as a serious rival Actually, however, it .is clear from Mr Bennett’s account. of a whale hunt that for ruthless ftrocity, mining, and deadliness of armament, he poor old Killer is a sheep_ compared with man. There is just one factor which may save the whales; they will presently grow too scarce to maintain the profits of the present establishments in the Antarctic. Legislation to prevent extinction will have little effect. “The legislator does not know, one might almost say he never knows. The whaler does not care.” A great effort is oeing made by the present establishments to drain the animal oil out of the southern ocean >efore other exploiters began to tap it. “The rapid progress made recently in outfit and machinery in the whaling industry is alarming. These items are becoming rapidly more grand and very much more expensive. . .• One Norwegian with a life experience in whaling once deplored the fact to me ‘that, his people were now loading so much weight on the whale’s Hack that it must soon sink with its load’—a volume of information expressed in a few words.”