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THE SEA FISHERIES
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attention to the northern waters that it inhabited.
This
gave rise to the great Spitzbergèn shery which Was
exploitéd both by the British and the Dutch. These whales
were very abundant, and apparently at rst,tame and easy
to capture ; as a result the slaughter was Wholesale, and
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by the end of the nineteënth century the Greenlandwhale
was practically exterminated, so that these sheries exiSt
no longer.
'
At the present day the northern sheries are practically
connèd. to the capture of the Rorqual, or Fin Whale, by
the N orwegians.
This is a very fast swimming whale
and it was not until the invention of the explosive harpoon
in
1866 that any serious attempt at capturing it was
possible.
Owing to its great vitality the old method of
capture by hand harpoon was. practically useless and
'
extremely dangerous for the sherman. But while in the
rst years of the twentieth century these northern sheries
Were the most importantin the Atlantic Ocean, now the
chief hunting grounds are in the frozen south. ‘ The whales
chiey taken in the Antarctic are the Blue Whale, the Fin
whale (Plate 103) and the
and
the most”
productive waters centre around the Falkland Islands.
Here, as in the North, the shery is “mainly carried out
by Norwegians; At thepresent day signs are not wanting
_
that even these sheries may be on the decline, the Hump—
back whale, which in 1910 formed a very high percentage
'
of the catches, now being largely Superseded by the Blue
whale. aAs a result the Falkland Islands Dependencies
in 1924 nanced an- expedition to study the life—histories
of the whales.
During the last twelve years this Disoowyy
Expedition has carried Out a scientic survey‘of the whaling
ground“s and much new knowledge has been gained on the”
'
distribution and migrations of whales; Important informa—
-_
tion has been obtained on their growth-and age at maturity
,