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

Whalebone or Baleen

The baleen or whalebone of these finner whales is only worth about £30 per ton. It hardly pays to cure it and market it. The whalebone of the Australis or Southern Right whale has fallen to £85 per ton; it is occasionally caught. Its bones and that of the finner brought down the price of the Greenland whalebone, which a few years ago was sold at between £2000 and £3000 per ton, one good whale having a ton in its mouth, which paid the expenses of the trip.

During the short season, 1st November till end of April, in a recent year the catch in South Georgia by twenty-one steamers amounted to five thousand whales, finner, hump-back and blue whales, which gave two hundred thousand barrels of whale oil and eight thousand tons guano.