Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

In l958 I was an invited speaker at the 15th International Congress of Zoology,
where I spoke on Age determination of whales by means of the corpora albicantia [in
their ovaries]. It was held in the Royal Albert Hall, London, a daunting
experience as the audience was about 5,000, but I enjoyed meeting zoologists from
all over the world.
In l959 I was appointed to the Consultative Committee on Grey Seals and
Fisheries as one of 2 Independent Members, remaining a member until l966.
Barton Worthington (formerly involved in African science, and then Deputy
Director of the Nature Conservancy and later a member of the NUTAE Committee
and Director of the International Biological Programme (IBP)) was Chairman. He
was one of those who pursuaded me later to take up work in Africa. I first met
John Morton Boyd (later Director for Scotland, NCC) through this committee and
he became a close friend. We had some good meetings occasionally further afield,
like Edinburgh, and . . . . . , where Captain Stansfield, Chairman of the Scottish
Salmon Fishers Association and also a member of our Committee entertained us to
lunch in his castle on wild Scottish salmon. At another meeting he distributed
salmon to members of the Committee, gratefully received in my case by Maureen.
At the l960 British Ecological Society, Symposium on The exploitation of Natural
Animal Populations; Durham, I gave paper on Some effects of whaling on the southern
stocks of whalebone whales. Here I met Ian McLaren, Canadian seal biologist and
marine biologist, David Jenkins, a grouse researcher, later Director of the Culterty
Station of the NERC, and Adam Watson, also based at Culterty, an eminent
Scottish ecologist/naturalist, working mainly on game birds, for the first time. In
l960 too I was an invited speaker at 25th North American Wildlife Conference,
Dallas, Texas, where I gave paper entitled: Problems of whale conservation. Here I
was very pleased to meet George Bartholomew, who had done original work on
the northern elephant seal on the islands off California and with whom I had
corresponded over the years. I travelled there via Hamilton, Canada, where I
visited my elder brother Peter and his family. I also visited New York, my first
and only visit; I met my sister-in-law's brother, who lunched me in the New York
Athletic Club, and I ascended the Empire State Building, visited the Statue of
Liberty, Central Park, Fifth Avenue and other landmarks.
Of course I attended a number of other meetings in the UK. But my point is
that this was a very small number of significant meetings for a scientist of my
relative seniority to have attended over the eight years I worked for NIO.
Nowadays, an SSO would expect to attend as many in one or two years.
Expedition to Steinshamn Whaling Station, Norway
The first opportunity to actually see some whales, albeit mainly dead ones,
came in June-July l955 when I travelled to a small whaling station on an island off
the west coast of Norway, where Peter Purves and I were to undertake a project to
establish the value of whale earplugs for determining the ages of whales and to
work out the best method for collecting the earplugs. It was a flat-calm crossing
and the sun shone all the while; I went ashore at Kristiansand on Sunday, 19 June
and had an hour there before sailing on to Oslo via Arendal. It meant going
through a narrow channel with wooded islands to the south and wooded coast to
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