But the “modern whales,” as I call them, when killed are towed ashore and pulled upon a slip at a station or alongside a great magazine ship anchored in some sheltered bay and are there cut up, whilst the little steam-whaleboat killer goes off in search of other whales. All parts of the body, at a fully equipped shore station, even the blood, of these finners are utilised, the big bones and flesh being ground up into guano for the fertilisation of crops of all kinds, and the oil and small amount of whalebone are used for many purposes. The oil is used for lubrication, soap, and by a new “hardening process” is made as firm as wax and is used for cooking, etc. Some of the whalebone fibre is used for stiffening silk in France, but of these uses of the products we may only give the above indication, for every year or two some new use is being found for whale products.
Piping in the Arctic
Modern Whale Gun and Harpoon
Ready for firing.
Though so large, these whales are not nearly so valuable as the Greenland whale; still their numbers make up for their comparatively small value.[1]
In the last five or six years these finner whales, formerly unattacked by man, have been hunted all round the world. In 1911 there were one hundred and twenty modern steam-whalers working north of the Equator, and in the Southern Hemisphere there were eighty-six. The total value of the catch for the year was estimated at two and three quarter million sterling.
These whales are rapidly becoming more shy and wary, still the catches increase and the value of oil goes up. The more unsophisticated whales in unfished oceans will have soon to be hunted. There is not the least fear of whales ever being exterminated, for long before that could happen, owing to reduced numbers and their increased shyness, hunting them will not pay the great cost incurred. So there will some day be a world-wide close season—just as has happened in the case of the Greenland whale, which is now enjoying a close season and is increasing in numbers in the Arctic seas.