Whale hunting with gun and camera: A naturalist's account of the modern shore-whaling industry, of whales and their habits, and of hunting experiences in various parts of the worldAndrews, Roy Chapman
Science
Whale hunting with gun and camera: A naturalist's account of the modern shore-whaling industry, of whales and their habits, and of hunting experiences in various parts of the world
Andrews, Roy Chapman
Whales; Whaling
The posterior part of a gray whale. Note the scalloped dorsal ridge of
the peduncle and the white markings along the sides.
]
Captain Johnson, of the _Rex Maru_, brought to the station at Ulsan a
gray whale which had been shot in the breast between the fins. He had
first seen killers circling about the whale which was lying at the
surface, belly up, with the fins outspread. The animal was absolutely
paralyzed by fright. The vessel steamed up at half speed and Johnson
shot at once, the iron striking the whale squarely between the flippers.
The gray whales live in such constant terror that when porpoises are
playing about a single animal, as frequently happens, it will sometimes
become terrified and dash madly for the shore, thinking that the killers
have appeared.
I have never personally witnessed it, but the gunners tell me that a pod
of gray whales can be stampeded much like a herd of cattle. If three or
four ships are near each other when a school of devilfish are found,
they draw together, each vessel going at full speed, while the sailors
beat tin pans and make as much noise as possible. The whales at once
dive, but as soon as they rise to spout the vessels rush at them again.
The devilfish go down once more but do not stay under long, ascending at
shorter and shorter intervals until finally they are plowing along at
the surface.
The animals are “scared up,” as the gunners say, and become terrified to
such a degree that everything is forgotten except the desire to get
away—and even the means of doing that. It is not always possible to
stampede a herd, for often the whales will disappear at the first sound
and not rise again until a long distance away. If killers are about, it
is very easy for the ships to stampede a herd of gray whales.
Even if the devilfish do exhibit considerable stupidity when danger from
orcas threatens, at other times they are the cleverest and most tricky
of all large whales. One day Captain Melsom, on the _S. S. Main_, was
hunting a gray whale in a perfectly smooth sea. The animal had been down
for fifteen minutes when suddenly a slight sound was heard near the ship
and a thin cloud of vapor was seen floating upward from a patch of
ripples which might have been made by a duck leaving the surface. The
whale had exposed only the blowholes, spouted, refilled the lungs, and
again sunk, doing it almost noiselessly. The gunners assert that this is
quite a usual occurrence when a single gray whale is being hunted.
One of the most interesting things in the life history of the devilfish
is the annual migration which occurs as regularly as the seasons. In no
other large cetacean is there anything like the migrating instinct which
carries the gray whales from the icy waters of the north three thousand
miles to the south to seek the warm lagoons of California and Korea in
which to raise their young.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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