Breeding Habits of the Greenland Whale

Abstract

VERY little is known about the breeding habits of the Greenland whale. In the Greenland Sea, according to the log-books of Scoresby Sen., females with calves with them were seldom seen except in spring, west of Spitsbergen, north of latitude 78° or 79°, and in the end of July off the Greenland coast. Young whales, with whalebone 2-3 feet long—the smallest which are seen by themselves—were also seldom seen except in a high latitude west of Spitsbergen in spring. Where they go to in the summer months is not hard to understand: as my father says, “the old females with the younger whales of both sexes bury themselves in the polar ice, north of latitude 80°, after (or before) the end of June, where no ship can follow them; retreating in the autumn southwards as the ice makes in the north” (Scottish Fishery Board; Seventh Annual Report, part 3, p. 366).