Newport daily independent., 1904-03-09
FORTUNE IN poRpo1sEs.
Many of the White Cetaceans Fre- fs quent the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
 and Are Valuable.

In
 |bE American tourists crossing the St.
 Lawrence from the mouth of the Sague-
 nay can almost always enjoy the sight of
 a number of porpoises disporting them
 selves upon the water in the neighbor-
 hood of Tadoussac, says the New York Sun. The great white cetaceans appear like shapeless masses of blubber as their arched backs show from time to time above the surface. They are doubtless attracted to the mouth of the Saguenay by the large number of salmon which en- ter the river throughout the season. A large industry is expected soon to spring up in various parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in connection with the hunting of porpoises. It has already been attempted upon a small scale, but the difficulty of capturing any great number of the animals has stood in the way of success. Now the difficulty has been overcome through the observations and experiments of Campbell McNab, a Canadian hunter, who has spent many years in the study of these animals. The adult porpoise of the St. Lawrence and the North Atlantic ocean is from 12 to IS feet in length. It somewhat re- sembles dolphin in shape, with large dorsal fin and mouth armed with many strcrg a1G s-sarD teeth. Each porpoise I is heiev-d to eat from one to three bar rels of fish day, so that it is difficult to estimate the frigatful ravages which the. make among the salmon, the her. ring and the cod. They are largely gre garious, though they often hunt their prey in couples. MT. McNab has often \ peered over the edge of an overhanging rock to watch them catch salmon at the mouth of stream and sometimes long distance up river, where they follow their prey. They chase salmon into a 8 shallow and then two approach it from \ either side The salmon appears un- A able to move, as if paralyzed with fear S If he attempts to rush from one of. his a pursuers he falls into the open mouth of S the other.
 The porpoise is equally expert in fish, a ing for the slippery eel MT. McNab opened one of these animals the other \ day and found more than 40 eels in it's $ stomach To prevent their wriggling, and to aid digestion, the porpoise cracks 5 the skull of the eel between it's teeth be- fore swallowing it.
 Like the eel, the porpoise can live a long time out of the water. In fact, it is ! virtually amphibious. Some time ago MT. McNab shot a number of the ani- ! mals which had been hauled ashore and bound together by their tails. After
 skinning another lot at some distance and taking out the blubber, he turned a few days later to the lot which had been
 last shot Unknown to him one had not : been killed outright. AS he passed in front of it it growled at him like dog. /"
 he says, and opened it's jaws to snap him. The porpoises are captured by being ; imprisoned at low tide on the shoals,
 over which they have journeyed when the tide was high, in pursuit of their prey. Hitherto the difficulty has been to find any barrier strong enough to retain such enormously strong, heavy beasts, ' and so many of them together as are { sometimes enclosed. MT. McNab has made the interesting discovery that the \ enormous nets through which they often broke are not necessary to hold back
 the brutes They are unable to stand the
 slightest vibration in the water, and so
 all that the hunter now finds necessary is
 to fasten long thin pole like fishing
 rod to a stake in the mouth of the
 stream, the bay or the estuary within
 which it is desired to retain the DOT
 poises. They remain to be stranded and
 killed upon the shadows rather than yen-
 tufe past the vibrating rod
 This sensitiveness is believed to have
 It's seat in the ear of the animal, which
 has so small an opening that it might
 almost have been made with pin. For
 years McNab has held firmly to this
 theory, only to be laughed at for his , pains. He has now proved it beyond peradventure, and has reaped the fruit
 of his persistence. At one tide the other
 day he secured 69 of the animals on the
 shoals of the Portneuf river few miles 4 below Tadoussac, and next year will ! pursue operations there upon i larger scale. He has secured nine year lease ] of the shoal from the government aiid \ has apparently a fortune within easy reach. The skin and oil from a single < porpoise are worth from $30 to $50. The utmost caution has to be taken \ not to drive the animals away from their haunts. If any of the blood or refuse of their dead is permitted to reach the wa ter, MT McNab declares, they will de- sert the place entirely. This is the ex- planation he gives of the present absence of porpoises from the River Ouelle and other places on the banks of the St. Law renee, where few years ago many of \ them were annually killed The DOT poise, he says, is one of the most intellE fent animals created.
 Unprotected Port.
 The reputation of house often de-