KILLING WHALES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 51, 22 October 1931, Page 4

KILLING WHALES

a ruthless industry antarctic slaughter. The author of "Whal'ing in the An-taretic"-:i'Mr," A. G.: B'enhett— lives in the Falkland Islands, and has voy-afe-ed ' corisiderably in' thb ' Aritarcfio, even to- the •cireum-Polar coast, hut he does not appear to he interested in his perso'nal adventures. He himself is not its subjecty writes H. M. Tomlinson in the iLondon- Observer. Mr 'B ennett • tells us little -of his own . oriind when . tak'ing part iri a whale hunt, but • we faney his sympathy is with the,! whale, and t-hough "he respeets' the har'di'hood of whalemen, and is even .a'stbnished '-by their endurance 'in circumstancds Vhieh would wash the guilt right- off the noai! prospect of a mlllaon sterling — -that is, to tlie view of any rational. man— yet the romance' -of whaling merely malces him shrug his shoulders. The pursuit of the whale t-o him does not suggest men's he'roio ' purpose and doam, as it did ' to- Melville, nor an ■opportunity; as in the case- of Bullen, for -satisfying- our curiosity, and our ability 'to take in the ineredible-; his chief wonder seems to be that '.so much remarkahle skill and courage Shorild he bxpended in a regi-on where a oheerful life — except to ; penguins --is- impossible, and- for the beneflt of distant shareholders who wouldn't know a Rorqual from- a Sperm. ■ The poor heasts -only possess one desire — -to esoape, and they have no means of defence whatever against their human ' persecutors. . . . ; The si'ght of a great whale wallowing in a orimson sea, and at the same time blowing his life-blood in scarlet foun•tains through his nostrils, is -one of the things one would like, if one could, to forget; but the vivid and terrihle picture is graven indelibly on- -the memory, deflling those wide spaces of pure air, pure ice, and pure water, in which it took place. 200,000 Whales Destroyed. ■ The Right whale of the Greenland fiS'hery is now almost extindt-; the Sperm is so reduced in numbers that its organised slaughter is no longer worth our m-oncy. The Blue and Fin whales, ' which migrate to feeding giounds in Antarctic seas, an um -violahle sanctuary hecause of dangers and distance, until shore stations, mother-ships, harpoon guns, and specially designed whale ships 'invaded the solitude, -are now the speeies 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 B ennett. » . ' Mr B ennett is not a humanitarian ; he is an impartial witness'-with a plain but- a vastly interesting story, and if what 'is horrihle happens to be ahout, he puts that in just as he does the Colours of the ice and the- sea at sun-down; he declares that never in the tropics : has he seen ! such remarkahle displays of light. Nevertheless there are -long periods when a new -canopy of cloud shuts down on that riesolate world, -and the gloom, cold -and silence at the end of the earth there hadly affect 'the men who are" looldng anxiously for an opp.ortunity to explode a bomb. The Whaler's Rival. There is an animal called the Orca, or iKiller. It is a toother wha'le, it is swift, it hunts in schools, and it fears nothing. As it may be 30 feet long, it is, with one exception, the most -terrihle of carnivores. The whalemen hate it as a serlous rival. Actually, however, it is clear from Mr Bennett's account of a Whale hunt, that for ruthless ferocity, cunning, and deadliness of ■ '• armament, the poor old Killer is a eheep compared with man. There is just -one factor wh'ich may save the whales; they will presently grow too scarce to maintain t'he profits of the present establishments in the Antarctic.