<Li> Location of prey resources </Li> <P> Blue whales are not easy to catch or kill . Their speed and power meant that they were rarely pursued by early whalers, who instead targeted sperm and right whales . In 1864, the Norwegian Svend Foyn equipped a steamboat with harpoons specifically designed for catching large whales . The harpoon gun was initially cumbersome and had a low success rate, but Foyn perfected it, and soon several whaling stations were established on the coast of Finnmark in northern Norway . Because of disputes with the local fishermen, the last whaling station in Finnmark was closed down in 1904 . </P> <P> Soon, blue whales were being hunted off Iceland (1883), the Faroe Islands (1894), Newfoundland (1898), and Spitsbergen (1903). In 1904--05 the first blue whales were taken off South Georgia . By 1925, with the advent of the stern slipway in factory ships and the use of steam - driven whale catchers, the catch of blue whales, and baleen whales as a whole, in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic began to increase dramatically . In the 1930--31 season, these ships caught 29,400 blue whales in the Antarctic alone . By the end of World War II, populations had been significantly depleted, and, in 1946, the first quotas restricting international trade in whales were introduced, but they were ineffective because of the lack of differentiation between species . Rare species could be hunted on an equal footing with those found in relative abundance . </P> <P> Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1962 book Profiles of the Future, was the first prominent intellectual to call attention to the plight of the blue whale . He mentioned its large brain and said, "we do not know the true nature of the entity we are destroying ." </P>

Where is the main hunting ground for blue whales located