Whales Limited

Back from its first postwar cruise to the antarctic was Britain's whaling fleet of three great "factory ships." Instead of the 75,000 tons of whale oil which Britain's Food Ministry had hoped for, they carried 40,000 tons. And they brought other bad news: whales were hardly more numerous than before the war.

British scientists who sailed with the whaling fleet were not surprised. Their explanation: whales are sluggish at multiplication. Females mate once in two years,* produce only one calf at a time. Next year they rest, suckling their calves six to seven months until, in the case of the great blue whales, they are over 50 feet long. A young whale must be at least three years old before bearing a calf.

The scarcity of whales was not the only disappointment. The whalers had been equipped with Asdic (sonic submarine detectors) and radar. But these modern gadgets did not work well.

With Asdic the harpoon-gunners hoped to follow a sounding whale on his deep dive under the sea, and to be waiting for him when he came up to blow. But the whales, nimbler than U-boats, dove out of Asdic's sonic beam, and the gunners had to rely, as of old, on their knowledge of whale psychology. Radar was useless for spotting surfaced whales, which gave very poor "pips" on its scope. Even at locating antarctic ice it was none too useful in the hands of the whalers' semi-trained operator.

The failure of Asdic and radar was probably all to the good, for the trouble with whaling before the war was its success, which threatened to exterminate whales in every ocean. British experts believe that whaling's future depends on strict regulation, better knowledge of the whales' migration and breeding habits.

To gain such knowledge they have been tagging whales, as ornithologists band birds, shooting markers into them in the hope that they will be recorded when the whale is eventually harpooned. This method has already proved that many whales are migrants. They mate and bear their young in tropical waters, usually in fall or winter. During this period they live partly on their fat, for their food is comparatively scarce in the tropics. In spring they move poleward, spend the summer in arctic or antarctic waters. Here the surface swarms with "krill," or free-swimming crustaceans, which they strain out of the water with the whalebone sieves in their mouths. A favorite kind of krill is a large, seagoing shrimp.

Whalers like these too. They shovel them out of whales' stomachs, ready pickled in gastric juices.

*One old salt described their mating: "The prettiest piece of navigation I ever seen."

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