South: the story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 expedition eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 531 pages of information about South.

South: the story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 expedition eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 531 pages of information about South.
All these birds were cut up, the livers and hearts were extracted for food, and the skins were used as fuel.  At the same time the stomachs were invariably examined, and a record kept of the contents.  The largest proportion of these contained the small crustacean Euphausia, and this generally to the exclusion of other forms.  Occasionally, however, small fish were recorded.  The quantity of Euphausiae present in most of the stomachs was enormous for the size of the birds.  These penguins were migrating, and came ashore only when the bays were clear of ice, as there were several periods of fourteen consecutive days when the bays and the surrounding sea were covered over with a thick compact mass of ice-floes, and then penguins were entirely absent.  Euphausiae, then, seem to be present in sufficient quantity in certain, if not in all, sub-Antarctic waters during the southern winter.  We may assume then that the migration to the south, during the Antarctic summer, is definitely in search of food.  Observations have proved the existence of a northern migration, and it seems highly improbable that this should also be in search of food, but rather for breeding purposes, and it seems that the whales select the more temperate regions for the bringing forth of their young.  This view is strengthened by the statistical foetal records, which show the pairing takes place in the northern areas, that the foetus is carried by the mother during the southern migration to the Antarctic, and that the calves are born in the more congenial waters north of the sub-Antarctic area.  We have still to prove, however, the possibility of a circumpolar migration, and we are quite in the dark as to the number of whales that remain in sub-Antarctic areas during the Southern winter.

The following is a rough classification of whales, with special reference to those known to occur in the South Atlantic: 

1.   Whalebone whales (Mystacoceti)
|
____________________|__________________
|                                     |
Right whales (Balaenidae)             Rorquals (Balaenopteridae)
|                     ________________|_________
Southern right whale             |                        |
(Balaena glacialis)         Finner whales              Humpback
(Balaenoptera)       (Megaptera nodosa)
|
|
Blue whale    (B. musculus)
Fin whale     (B. physalis)
Sei whale     (B. borealis)
Piked whale   (B. acutorostrata)
Bryde’s whale (B. brydei)
2.  Toothed whales (Odontoceti)
|
_________________________|________________________
|                        |                       |
Sperm whale              Beaked whales              Dolphins
(Physeter catodon) (including bottlenose whales)  (1) Killer
(Hyperoodon rostratus)     (Orcinus orca)
(2) Black Fish
(Globicephalus melas)
(3) Porpoises
(Lagenorhynchus sp.)

The subdivision of whalebone whales is one of degree in the size of the whalebone.  These whales have

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South: the story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 expedition from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.