Modern Whaling & Bear-Hunting / A record of present-day whaling with up-to-date appliances in many parts of the world, and of bear and seal hunting in the Arctic regions

by W. G. Burn Murdoch

Returns from Whaling

Taking in the other islands of the Falkland Islands Dependencies in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn, the catch in a recent year amounted to four hundred and thirty thousand barrels of oil—eight thousand three hundred and seventy-five tons guano, the gross value of which may be reckoned at £1,360,000. Practically the whole of this goes to Norway.

For forty-eight years this Modern Whaling has been carried on in the North Atlantic, and since 1904 the Modern Whaling which we advocated in Edinburgh in 1895 has been prosecuted by Norwegians in the South Atlantic from desolate barren British possessions, with the great results mentioned above. There are vast areas of ocean teeming with these whales where, so far, they have not been hunted, and still the general British public stands aloof and takes no share in it. Whaling to-day, from the Norwegian point of view, is an industry: three generations have been brought up on it; but from the average British point of view it is still a speculation.