Whale meat is used in Japan. On Norwegian sta tions it is utilized fresh. Cut into 20 kg. blocks, it is refrigerated for shipment by special railway cars. It is sold at about half the price of beef. Only the best meat is used, but in a 5o ft. whale this will reach 2 tons. Whalebone, though less valuable and in the whales now hunted less abundant, is still useful, that from the fin whale being used mainly for brushes. Oil, however, is the chief product of modern whaling. (See WHALE OIL.) Ambergris, which is used as a fixative for perfumes, is found in a small percentage of sperm whales, and is a pathological prod uct; it is never abundant, and is usually searched for owing to its great value. Whale meal is a valuable constituent of both cattle and chicken food, and whale guano has general utility as manure.
The Svend Foyn gun was used first for whales off the Norwegian coast ; and finnus (Balaenoptera physalus), bottlenose (Hyperoodon rostratus), and sei (Balaenoptera borsalis) are still taken there. Its use spread to Scottish and other waters, and in 1904 Capt. Larsen founded the first company for Antarctic whaling. This whaling rapidly grew to be the chief part of the industry. Norwegian, British and Argen tine companies are at work, though the main part of the operations are in all cases carried out by Norwegian. The chief bases are in the dependencies of the Falkland Islands—South Georgia, South Orkneys, South Shetlands and South Sandwich, and these in recent years have (excluding Japan) accounted for nearly two-thirds of the world's productions. In the 1927-28 season, possibly owing to unusually favourable conditions due to ice distribution, whaling showed a tendency to spread from the more southerly stations along the ice edge ; in that season the total production of these dependencies was 804,000 barrels, or 136,000 tons. Since 1925 the Ross sea has been laid under contribution.
The tendency to employ pelagic whalers, i.e., those capable c f embarking and treating the whale in the open ocean, is undoubtedly increasing, and great sums of money have already been invested in these craft. Apart from the Antarctic, they have been employed
on the African coast, where the humpback (Megaptera nodoza) is the chief species taken. Evidently the extension of whaling far from land bases will greatly increase the destruction entailed, already immense. A large (89 ft.) blue whale (Balaenoptera mus culus) may yield nearly 28 tons of oil, but this, though now the chief species hunted, is far above the average of even that large species; the catch probably represents over 12,000 whales.
It is natural that a destruction so rapid should awaken fears that the rate of destruction is greater than the stock of whales can replace. Whales breed slowly, the females giving birth to young (as a rule one only) probably once in two years at most. It has been said that the discovery of the Greenland whale alone saved the Biscay whale from extinction. The Norwegians, the greatest whaling nation, took in all seas 51,40o barrels of oil in 1904; in 1927 they took 704,000 barrels. The need of some regulations is felt almost universally, and some are in force. The Falkland Islands Government prohibits the capture of right whales and, except by permit, of humpbacks. This and other Governments prohibit the shooting of calves and cow whales with calves. Many authorities insist on the total utilization of the carcase as far as practicable, and the Falklands permit whaling only under licences which prescribe the number of catchers to be employed. None of these regulations deal with operations in the open ocean.
About the year 1926, a well-equipped marine laboratory at , South Georgia, the R.R.S. "Discovery," and a vessel ("William Scoresby"), specially built for marking whales for the purpose of tracing their movements began investigating these problems. A cruise to study conditions along the ice edge was projected by Christiansen of Sandefjord. Attempts are made at co-ordinating all results by a committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, which works in touch with the Economic committee of the League of Nations.