Is Increasing

Production of Whole OH Is Increasing

'From Our New Zealand Correspondent.

World 'production of whale oil in 957 was substantially higher than n the two previous years.

The figures are 418,000 short tons or 1955, 423,000 for 1956, and [35,000 tons last year.

Sperm oil, on the other hand, iras down last year, the relative igures for the three years being '7,000, 110,000, and 90,000 short tons.

Sperm oil is the non-edible ndustrial oil taken from the heads f the toothed barrel-headed sperm shales and is not technically lassed as whale oil, which is the lubber or fat from the body of 11 whales, edible and used for oap as well.

The permissible total catch on on-sperm or baleen whales aken in the Antarctic, was fixed y the International Whaling Com lission at 145,000 blue whale units, n fact this was exceeded by 237 nits, due to the impossibility of alting the killing by all twenty xpeditions precisely on the agreed )tal.

All expeditions send daily reports f their catch to the Commission, nd as the grand total of all nears the agreed maxi mum they are notified to cease perations.

The 1957 whales were somewhat itter than those taken in the revious year in the Antarctic, hus, though 14,875 blue whales ere taken in the previous year the ield of oil was greater in 1957 than i 1956.

In the first week of the 1958 iason, which commenced in muary, Japan’s six expeditions ad taken a total of 1,138 blue hale units, each expedition having cceeded its predicted catch.

Of the tags recovered from bales in the Antarctic in 1957, one ad been in a whale for 22 years.