SLAUGHTER OF WHALES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 792, 12 October 1929, Page 28

SLAUGHTER OF WHALES

5,500 KILLED IN A SEASON ANTARCTIC INVESTIGATIONS | The second report of the Discovery i Investigations Committee deals with the Southern whaling season from | January, 1927, to May, 1925. The main purpose of the committee is to make : a serious attempt to place the whaling j industry on a scientific basis. Other ' objects are to render service to navij gation by conducting a hydrographic survey of the whaling areas, to ini' quire into the resources of the region j from Qie point of view of fisheries, I and to add to scientific knowledge cf t the sea. ! “The whaling season 1927-28,” says ! the report, “proved a momentous one : Cor whaling in the Antarctic. Whaling off the South Shetland Islands was more successful than in any previous year. Five thousand five hundred whales were taken, and the yield of oil was over 66,000 tons, an increase in output of 47 per cent, on the previous season, itself a season only once surpassed for output iu the history' of South Shetlands whaling; and the whales were taken by catchers working neither from shore stations ncr from mother-ships anchored in the shelter of land, but from factory ships ! operating along the edge of the ice. ; It is true that the success attending the operations very' probably may* have ! been due to climatic conditions which I occur only from time to time, but its i magnitude, coupled with the particular character of the whaling, resulted I hi an enormous expansion of whaling j enterprise. The accompanying increase of catching power must inevitably modify profoundly the future of | whaling and the problems attending its regulation. I “It is fortunate,” adds the • report, i ’’that the Discovery Investigations ! have not only* made considerable progress in the study of the whale stock aud the conditions affecting the distribution and abundance of whales, but that they have incidentally secured records of these conditions before anil during the season which l»as proved j the occasion of such remarkable changes in the magnitude of the industry and in the methods it adopts. Rate of growth and reproduction, distribution and migration, the causes determining natural good and bad seasons, are of the essence of any problem of whaling regulation. The great increase which will occur in the destruction of whales—a destruction sufficient to alarm experienced whalers, whose immediate interest in in an expanded industry*—greatly increases the need for a speedy attainment of definitive results in the researches.” Our Oslo correspondent telegraphs; A Norwegian civil engineer, M. Holm Hansen, has invented an electric harpoon containing 76 volts for k lling whales. The invention has been tried successfully off the Faeroe Islands* the whales being killed instantaneously'. This new method has excited great interest in whaling circles, where it is regarded as much more economical than the present means of killing.