 Whales yield only one twentieth as much of the world's oil as rapeseed, and every product of whale oils could be made from vegetable oils. But we continue to kill so many whales that some people fear for their survival. Large whales are among the most elusive of animals. They have never been successful of ever even seeing the large whales alive, except in the course of killing them. Then, they are observed in flight, in panic, and in their death throws. What we know about these air-breathing, sea-dwelling mammals is not a lot, and most of it has been learned from dead ones. Dr. N. A. McIntosh, taking measurements of the lower jawbone of a sperm whale in the British Museum of Natural History, is one of a handful of world-recognized whale authorities. Most important advances in whale study have been made within the lifetime of Dr. McIntosh, but there is still much to be learned about the beasts. A life-size 100-foot-long model of the huge blue whale dominates the museum gallery. The details of its life are mysteries and may never be known. Because of man's predation, there are only five to six thousand blue whales left in all the oceans, and their fate is uncertain. Skeletons, painstakingly pieced together, sketch the evolution of the whale family, including the smaller dolphins and porpoises, from a small insect-eating land mammal, a common ancestor of whales and cows. Skeletons help us sort out the various species. They reveal vestiges of the limbs the whales' land-living ancestors possessed, but all this is a far cry from the living, breathing animal itself. Scientists have only lately been able to study living whales in a small way, if a 25-foot killer whale that eats between 300 and 400 pounds of fish a day can be considered small. Though they bear life young and suckle them, like all other mammals, whales have made extreme adaptations to life in the sea. Some of these can be observed at California's Sea World. The killer whale can hold its breath for 17 minutes, yet its blowhole, seen here in slow motion, can open to allow the whale to exhale and inhale and close again, all in less than three tenths of a second. Its eyes are similar to man's, but with a flatter cornea, they may function as well underwater as out of it. Various species have evolved highly complex hearing and signaling devices, some of which are now being studied. All whales, big and small, have horizontal tail fins. This is opposite to fishes, whose vertical tail fins move from side to side, propelling them with each stroke. Only the upthrust of the tail fin gives a whale propulsion. The downstroke is a relaxed return. By this means the killer whale can swim more than 20 miles per hour. The large pointed dorsal fin looks deadly, but it does not, despite legend, slit the bellies of the killer's prey. In whaler's stories and some serious literature, this large dolphin is painted as a bloodthirsty insatiable monster. In captivity, it is generally docile, playful, and intelligent enough to cooperate in various scientific experiments. It remains, however, an extremely dangerous animal to be approached with caution. All whales seem monsters once. Can'ts thou catch Leviathan with a hook, challenge the Old Testament with a fine contempt for puny man. Jonas supposedly learned wisdom in a whale's belly, but left no statement of his reactions. Apparently, man's early contacts with the whale were awful for man. Artists kept well away from whales, and their art showed it. It took them a long time to learn how they really looked. Gradually, whale portraits took a more realistic turn, as men learned to hunt them successfully far from the European coast. It was the beginning of organized whaling, in which the animal is a cash crop, harvested for profitable sale in a distant market. While commercial whalers over-killed a type of whale called the right whale and destroyed their own industry, primitive whaling, then and now, never threatened the survival of any species. Primitive whaling is linked to the immediate needs of small communities. Among the Eskimos of Point Barrow, Alaska, April is called the moon for the beginning of whaling. Then the communities move with their open boats to the edge of the ice pack, knowing that the bowheads will pass near the coast in their annual migration. The hunt at the end of winter can be a life-and-death matter for the Eskimos. And it is a fairly even contest, since they cannot afford the sophisticated gear that makes whale hunting easy. Often a bowhead is taken inside of land, not several, for the community can handle only one at a time. Its capabilities are about equal to its appetites. Their implements for flensing, or cutting up the animal, are similar to those one finds in museums of 18th and early 19th century whaling. Virtually all of the whale is used, and most of it is eaten. Whale meat has earned no gourmet reputation among most of the nations, though many species are edible and a good source of protein. Eskimos know its value. While not everyone's cup of tea, the Eskimos' way with the whale is sound ecology. But the ecological balance is narrow, for the bowhead whale is no longer numerous. It fell victim to the fashionable wasp-wasted silhouette of the 19th century. As the demand swelled for tight corsets of so-called whale bone, the price of baleen from the jaw of the bowhead whale skyrocketed. Just as hunters now bag the disappearing tiger for fur wraps, they slaughtered the bowhead for the hourglass figure. Then, whale bone corsets went out, and the market collapsed, luckily for the bowheads and the Eskimos. Not fashioned, but international agreements stopped the slaughter of the California gray whale. Hunted along its eastern Pacific migratory route, until there were just one or two thousand left, the gray was put under protection in 1937 and is now shot only by cameraman. As a result, its numbers have grown to about 11,000. Naturalists now migrate to the gray whale's winter home and nursery in Lower California to observe the calves sporting with their mothers. The young, averaging 2,000 pounds at birth, represents so many potential barrels of oil from one viewpoint. From another, they are a near miracle of conservation. The gray is the only protected whale species so far to come back from the verge of extinction. Among the protected species that have not come back, the black or bisque right whale, first commercial target. The Greenland right, or bowhead, rare in the Atlantic, though surviving in the Pacific. And two 20th century victims, the slow-moving, melodious humpback, and the enormous blue overkill by the early 1960s, despite solemn warnings from biologists all over the world. Flotillas went to the Antarctic as to war to kill the blues. These scenes from an old Hollywood short subject record the destruction of an irreplaceable resource. The blue whale is the largest animal that ever lived, dwarfing even the hugest dinosaurs, an efficient food processor, converting its diet of tiny marine animals into its own 90-ton packages of protein-rich meat. But the blue whale was killed for its oil. In a single year, 3 million barrels from 29,400 animals. After many millions of years of survival, the blue whale was nearly wiped out in a generation. The International Whaling Commission, a body that exists supposedly to protect whales from over-exploitation, acted too late. The same kind of factory operation with a fleet of fast catcher vessels supplying the mothership is still used against other species in the Antarctic and North Pacific. On the flensing deck of the factory ship, the camera recorded the scale of the beast compared to man. The huge jaw bristling with baleen. The thick, oil-rich blubber for which it died. Cutted in rational numbers, the blue whale could have furnished protein to a hungry world forever. Now, for commercial purposes, it is an extinct animal. A dry docked factory ship in the one-time whaling town of Sendefjord, Norway, is a more fitting memorial than the heroic statue across the harbor. This was a whaling capital when Norway led the world in deep-sea whaling. Now, the largest whales are gone. More whales have to be killed for less oil, and it is hardly profitable. The Norwegians have almost dropped out, leaving the Russians and the Japanese. Whaling accounts often slight the Japanese, whose tradition is as old as the Western one. The Japanese have always used every possible part of the whale for every possible purpose, including human consumption. A modern poster shows some of the products they make from baleen whales, which are the edible ones. The gamut runs from bacon and margarine to corsets and shoehorns. The toothed whales yield even more industrial products. Small wonder the Japanese are reluctant to stop, so long as there are any whales worth catching. How long will that be? Scientists in several countries serve as advisors to the International Whaling Commission, which decides how many whales can be taken each year. Ironically, scientists are dependent for laboratory specimens and raw data on the whaling industry itself. London biologist Ray Gamble has the cooperation of a shore-based whaling station in Durban, South Africa. Here, whaling is a rational, efficient enterprise with little left to chance. The vessels operate as much as 180 miles offshore and a large part of their catch is in sperm whales. Herds live in these waters the year around, but they are not easy to find. Spotter aircraft flying up to 10 hours a day are the extra eyes of the whaling fleet. Beside the pilot sits the spotter, an experienced whaler. A lot of 20th century technology is brought to bear. Automatic controls free the pilot for navigation. Cruising at 500 feet in good weather, the spotter can pick out a whale's spout eight miles away. There is no shout of thar she blows. He simply radios the nearest catcher. Once spotted, the sperm whale's only defense is escaped, and the boats are faster. When the whales dive, sonar records the direction and depth of their soundings. The track angling to the right shows the path of the dive. The ship's movements are controlled by the sonar operator until she is right in among the whales. Now they are coming to the surface. The harpooner takes over. Modern harpoons have a delayed charge that explodes inside the whale, and most of the time kills quickly. At present, as in the times of Moby Dick and the Great Yankee Fleet, sperm whales are the most hunted species. But then it took a great many men to kill a few whales, odds that technology has now reversed. The problem then was to find sperm whales and kill them. The problem now is to find how many sperm whales can be killed without endangering the species. Determining the facts and reporting them to the International Commission that regulates whaling is Gamble's job. From the slipway in Durban Harbor, whales travel their last three miles by railroad to the factory where they are made into pet food, fertilizer, and a versatile lubricating oil highly prized by submarine engineers. On the platform, the biologist must take his samples and his chances among the sharp flensing knives on the blood-slick deck. Production doesn't slow down for science, although the ultimate fate of the sperm whale and of the industry depends on the accuracy of its findings. Gamble gets specimens from every whale during the half hour it takes to dismember it. Teeth are a prime target. Each sperm whale carries its life calendar there. Amid the noise, work, and stench of flensing, no one remembers that the sperm has the largest brain of any animal, that it probably dives deeper than any other mammal, that it leads a complex social life of which we know very little so far. When a female has reached the right stage of dismemberment, Gamble cuts open and measures the mammary gland to determine whether it has recently suckled a calf. Raw material for the statistics of the reproductive cycle. It is illegal to kill females when they are nursing young, but no harpooner can tell when a female target may be pregnant. The discovery of fetuses is a fairly common occurrence. Sperm whales carry for 14 and a half months. This fetus is three feet long and about four months old. Two young males come off the flat car, about 15 years old, 37 feet long. Had they lived to full growth, they could have measured 55 feet. Whatever can be learned of a male's sexual past and one's potential future is hidden in the cells of the testes. It is important to know at what age the young males become active breeders because this concerns the reproductive capacity of the species. Gamble takes small samples which are carefully identified and preserved for later analysis. Science moving ahead on just a few slices while it takes the entire animal to make oil and profits for industry. Specimens snatched from the butcher's block in Durban, shipped to London, end up in the modest laboratories of the Whale Research Unit. The best way to determine the age of a toothed whale is by its teeth. The sperm whale tooth is composed largely of dentine, laid down in alternating lighter and darker layers. These bands are a record of the whale's growth. Sawed in two and soaked in dilute formic acid, the teeth show alternate ridges and grooves corresponding to the original layers. Whale biologists are now convinced that one layer is grown every year. Count the ridges and you count the age of the animal, although nobody yet knows what causes the layering. When the age is known, it can be correlated with information derived from the soft parts of the animal, for example the testes. Samples from Durban are embedded in wax and mounted on a microtome. Far sharper than a flencer's knife, the blade slices very thin sections which are mounted on slides. The slides are stained with various dyes to differentiate among the several kinds of cells present in the tissue, each of which may tell part of the story. Microscopic examination reduces the sexual history of a sperm whale to a statistical item. Its state of immaturity, puberty, or sexual maturity. In this instance, the whale was fully mature. The tubules are filled with cells that were actively dividing to produce spermatozoa. The slides are made in hundreds and thousands. Intimate knowledge of each individual whale leads to an understanding of the population as a whole. This is expressed in statistical terms. Computer printouts summarize what is known about the size, range, and reproductive capacity of various whale populations. From this data, the biologists advise members of the International Whaling Commission how many whales can safely be harvested. Biologists make the statistics, but the whaling industry makes the quotas. In making a mathematical model, the biologists must start with a number, say 1,000 mature female sperm whales. Sperms breed only once in four years, so one fourth or 250 give birth each year. Of the newborn, one half are males whose breeding pattern requires a different model, so they do not count in this one. A percentage of the 125 females, averaging 6, die in each of the first nine years, leaving 72 when the time comes to join the mature females, of which about 58 die of natural causes each year. Since there are 72 replacements, the surplus is 14. The number per thousand whalers can take yearly without reducing the herd. By calculations like these, the whales survive or perish. Is there any reason other than profit to catch a whale? Perhaps not, so far as the people who catch them are concerned, but there is more potential profit for mankind in some sorts of whaling than in others. These men are beating the water to drive pilot whales into the shore. Pilot whales and some other small species, dolphins and porpoises, can sometimes be rounded up like cattle when the herds stray into the shallow waters of fjords and bays. Traditionally, this was the occasion for a mass slaughter, but fisherfolk have learned in recent years to take porpoises and dolphins alive. Their actual capture is easy. The small whales rarely show fright when cornered. Avoiding injury to the captives, safe packaging and rapid transport are the hardest parts of the game. Their destination will be one of two new and growing markets, public aquariums and scientific institutions. In both, close observation and study of the smaller whales and captivity has begun to yield answers to some ancient perplexities. For instance, how do whales sleep? Bottle-nosed porpoises doze on the pool bottom for up to four minutes at a stretch. When they want a deep sleep, they surface and float. A flick of their tail every 20 to 50 seconds brings their blowhole out of the water and they breathe. As sleep deepens, the tail sinks, its movements diminish, and the animal becomes nearly immobile so long as the water is calm. These observations were made recently by James McCormick at Princeton University. No one yet knows how porpoises sleep in rough open water. Perhaps they do not sleep at all. Despite the odds, there are scientists who study whales in the wild. Off Bermuda, a herd of the once-numerous humpback whales appears each spring. An acoustical biologist from Rockefeller University, Roger Payne, meets them there each year and lowers special underwater microphones to record their songs. Until a few years ago, it was believed that these 40 to 50-foot beasts were probably mute. In fact, they make some of the most extraordinary sounds known in the animal kingdom, though no one yet knows why they sing or even how. There is still much to be learned about whales and perhaps even more to be learned from them if they survive. Man is their only enemy.