12. Scientific Appraisal of Antarctic Whale Stocks

(from "Chairman's Report of the Thirteenth Meeting")


In accepting the reports of the Scientific Committee, the Special Ad Hoc Scientific Committee and the First Interim Report of the Special Committee of Three Scientists, the Commission understood that the programme of work of the latter two bodies was nearly the same and that they would work together in close co-operation. In the First Interim Report of the Committee of Three Scientists, Dr. Chapman, who had been elected Chairman, stated that his Committee would co-operate with the Ad Hoc Scientific Committee by guiding the preparation of existing data in an appropriate form, recommending what additional data were required, devising appropriate methods of analysis to determine optimum yield, assisting in the preparation of an estimate by these methods and in supplying to the Commission an independent opinion as to the nature and reliability of the results.

The Commission also understood that to obtain a preliminary report on its task from the Special Committee of Three Scientists by the 1962 meeting, a very considerable assembly of tabulation would have to be ready for processing at a Special Meeting of the Ad Hoc Scientific Committee which it was agreed should be convened by Dr. Chapman and held, if possible, at Seattle before the end of 1961.

The tabulation required consists of four forms, E1 and E2 sent to the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics and forms C and D sent to the research institutes supplying the biological information. The work starts from the data on some 800,000 whales for which the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics has information on sex, length, time and place of capture. In order to convert this into age-composition and eventually to produce yield estimates, use must be made of the biological data collected by the individual research groups. It is expected that grouping by species, sex, geographical area, year, month and expedition may result in 4,000 length-frequency and age-length tables.

In order to deal with this mass of material, the information on the tables will have to be put on cards so that it may be handled and processed for yield equations or other calculations in an electronic computer. This part of the work it is intended to have done in Seattle, to which place the forms should be sent off two months before the joint meeting of the Ad Hoc Scientific Committee and the Special Committee of Three Scientists planned tentatively to begin on the 4th December 1961. The forms should therefore be posted to Dr. Chapman by 1st October so as to give him a month to prepare the data for use by the joint meeting. The cost of these operations, including the carding of data by the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics was estimated roughly at £4,000.

The Commission expressed their thanks and appreciation to the Special Committee of Three Scientists.

_