The Greenland right whale is one of the largest of sea mammals,
reaching a length of from 50 to 60 feet, and has a marvelously
specialized development. Its enormous head comprises about one-third of
the total length, with a gigantic mouth provided with about 400 long,
narrow plates of baleen, or whalebone, attached at one end and hanging
in overlapping series from the roof of the mouth. These thin plates of
baleen rarely exceed a foot in width and are from 2 to over 10 feet
long. One edge and the free end of each plate is bordered with a stiff
hairlike fringe.
The northern seas frequented by these whales swarm with small, almost
microscopic, crustaceans and other minute pelagic life, which is
commonly so abundant that great areas of the ocean are tinged by them
to a deep brown. These gatherings of small animal life are called
“brit” by the whalers and furnish the food supply of the bowhead. The
whale swims slowly through the sea with its mouth open, straining the
water through the fringed whalebone plates on each side of its mouth,
thus retaining on its enormous fleshy tongue a mass of “brit,” which
is swallowed through a gullet extraordinarily small in comparison with
the size of the mouth. Among all the animal life on the earth there is
not a more perfectly developed apparatus provided for feeding on highly
specialized food than that possessed by the right whale--one of the
hugest of beasts and feeding on some of the smallest of animals, untold
numbers of which are required for a single mouthful.
The bowhead is a circumpolar species, which in summer frequents the
Arctic ice pack and its borders, and on the approach of winter migrates
to a more-southerly latitude. For centuries this huge mammal has formed
the main basis for the whaling industry in far northern waters, first
in the Greenland seas and later through Bering Straits into the Arctic
basin north of the shores of Siberia and Alaska.
Each large whale is a prize worth winning, since it may yield as
much as 200 barrels of oil and several thousand pounds of whalebone.
All know of the rise and fall of the whaling business, on which many
fortunes were built and on which depended the prosperity of several New
England towns.
Whaling served to train a hardy and courageous generation of sailors
the like of which can nowhere be found today. They braved the perils of
icy seas in scurvy-ridden ships, and when fortune favored brought to
port full cargoes of “bone” and oil, which well repaid the hardships
endured in their capture. Many a ship and crew sailed into the North in
pursuit of these habitants of the icy sea never to return.
Interest in the brave and romantic life of the whalers still exists,
though the most picturesque quality of their calling passed with the
advent of steam whalers and the “bomb gun,” which shoots an explosive
charge into the whale and kills it without the exciting struggle which
once attended such a capture by open boats.
It has been well said that no people ever advanced in the scale of
civilization without the use of some artificial illuminant at night.
The world owes a great debt to the right whale and its relatives for
their contribution to the “midnight oil,” which encouraged learning
through the centuries preceding the discovery of mineral oil. It also
furnished the whalebone which built up the “stays” so dear to the
hearts of our great-grandmothers.
The female right whale has a single young, which she suckles and keeps
with her for about a year. She shows much maternal affection, and a
number of cases are recorded in which the mother persisted in trying to
release her young after it had been harpooned and killed.
Every year, as the pack ice breaks up for the season, the bowheads move
north through Bering Straits. As late as 1881 Eskimos along the Arctic
coast of Alaska put to sea in walrus-hide umiaks, armed with primitive
bone-pointed spears, seal-skin floats, and flint-pointed lances for the
capture of these huge beasts. These fearless sea hunters, with their
equipment handed down from the Stone Age, were sufficiently successful
in their chase to cause trading schooners to make a practice of
visiting the villages along the coast to buy their whalebone.
From one of the whaling ships encountered north of Bering Straits the
summer of 1881 we secured a harpoon, taken from a bowhead in those
waters, bearing a private mark which proved that it came from a whaling
ship on the Greenland coast, thus showing conclusively that these
whales in their wanderings make the “Northwest Passage.”
Persistent hunting through the centuries has vastly decreased whales of
all valued species, and the modern steam whaler is hastening their end.
Their only hope of survival lies in wise international action, and it
is urgent that this be secured in time.
[Illustration: KILLER WHALE]
[Illustration: WHITE WHALE, OR BELUGA]
[Illustration: GREENLAND RIGHT WHALE, OR BOWHEAD]
[Illustration: SPERM WHALE, OR CACHALOT]