The Thames Whale and the Killers in Eden
by Kyeann Sayer, Nomad on 01.23.06
Whenever there is news of whales, I think of a documentary I caught not long ago about the "Killers of Eden," a group of orca off the coast of Eden in southern Australia who helped local fishermen hunt and kill migrating baleen whales in the late 19th century. By flapping their tails against the water outside one family's house, the orca would notify the fisherman when the large migrants were coming through, and the humans and orca would hunt together. After a successful kill, the carcass remained in the water for a few days so that the orca pod could eat the tongue. The fisherman then retrieved and used the rest of the whale. Crazy, huh? It's a stunning, well-documented story of cooperation between species.
As my own concern for environmental issues emerged, it had little connection to whales. I had never seen one when, at Jr. High Drama Camp I was voted "Most Likely to Save a Whale." The acknowledgment was, rather, a snarky nod to the recycling regimen and youthful vegetarian evangelism I imposed on my fellow, reluctant thespians. By the time of my late 80s adolescence, whale saving had morphed into a bumper sticker slogan joke. Distanced from the PR-savvy, heroic imagery of Greenpeace activists risking their lives under the rain of Soviet harpoons, years later in suburban Denver, "save the whales" like "treehugging" or "Spotted Owl loving," had become a successful rhetorical repository for the freakish, irrational, and anti-industry.
Last week, whale saving became concrete, again, on an international stage. A Greenpeace activist nearly bit it at the hands of a Japanese whaler. Then, the Greenpeace Southern Ocean campaign came to smelly, blubbery end, when a twenty ton carcass was dumped on the steps of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin. Pretty ballsy. Now an endangered Right Whale has washed up on the coast of Florida, and others have been seen out of range off of Texas. And, of course, the bottlenose whale made its famous Thames diversion. We seem to have reached a sort of whale tipping point, an opportunity to raise awareness about how their condition relates to the health of our oceans, human health, rising sea levels ...
By Wednesday we should know from the necropsy why the Northern bottlenose left its pod for an ill-fated London visit. Sonar from Navy ships? Illness? Odd word, necropsy. Until looking it up, I didn't know that it refers to the animal version of an autopsy. According to Wikipedia, both words derive from Greek: autopsy, to see oneself, and necropsy, to see a dead body. Apparently calling a human autopsy a necropsy is considered an insult.
This human/animal division takes me back to the Killers of Eden, and the history of inter-species trust that made the later whaling symbiosis possible. The Yuin people that preceded European-origin fisherpeople on the shores of Eden believed that the orca were reincarnations of their departed, and thus made no such distinction between themselves and the animals, between the types of dead. They apparently left their hunted carcasses as offerings for the orca. Generations of this interaction seem to have led to the possibility for the partnership called the "law of the tongue."
The Eden tale does have a sad ending, as most whale stories inevitably do, with the history of over-whaling (though I haven't seen Free Willy or Whale Rider!). But you should read about it for yourself, or see the documentary, just because the potential is so extraordinary. I'm not suggesting some sort of kitschy romanticizing of the Yuin (about whom I know nothing beyond the documentary). But as we do our part to help the whales out, while simultaneously watching entities beyond our control destroy life on a scale as massive as the oceans, it's nice to hold on to those little bits of wonder and potential. If all of the people who wanted to see the whale escape from the Thames alive became actively concerned about the fate of whales in general, as much as thirty years ago, who knows? ::
Resources:
Greenpeace
NRDC and Sonar
Sea Shepard Conservation Society
World Wildlife Federation
Animal Planet Marine Mammal Guide
Killers of Eden
Nature Documentary: Killers in Eden
nice post K-- eductaional and thought provoking... personally, when it comes to stories of our (human & animal) cooperation i think i would rather look at dolphins helping lost boaters, or healing autistic kids than tongue eating and baline for perfumes... but still a good indicator of our relationship (potential) on the planet....
..and interesting that you mention sonar, as theer was just a recent news event about that: it appears that government investigators deleted every Sonar reference in a report on the beaching of 37 whales last year on the North Carolina shores
sometimes it's no wonder why they chose to go back into the sea
Good post. I strongly encourage readers to donate to Sea Shepherd, the only organisation who actually STOPS whaling and illegal fishing vessels. They don't wave banners, instead they foul propellers and sink ships (without ever hurting anyone). Their activities have been upheld by the Canadian courts as legal under the UN. They need money to buy a new faster vessel to catch the whalers. Help them to stop whaling (I don't work for them, I just admire them!!) http://www.seashepherd.org/
great post, and great follow ups. i love the sea shepherds!
In a side note on cooperative fishing between humans and cetaceans - there are also stories of West African fishermen working with bottlenose dolphins. The fishermen will call for the dolphins by slapping the water with sticks or paddles. The dolpins then herd a school of mullet up into the shallows where the wading fishermen trap them into their gill nets. They then wait for the dolphins to then eat their fill of the fish and keep the rest for themselves.
Well, To the sea shepard person... When I lived in Neah Bay Washington, a native reservation. They threatend to kidnap me and the other kids in the school system there... please dont glorify them.
And Whaling is wrong to me, as a alaskan native... I find that alaska should not be allowed to whale, and neah bay should be the only ones who should. In Alaska Ive been with the whaling crews, they dont care about the culture at all, they just like to shoot stuff, they are my relatives too.
People in Alaska let whale meat rot in their front yards, 100's of pounds... its disgusting. I used to eat the meat when I was younger, now I find that eating it is disrespectful to the animals, due to that native culture was based on the killing of the animals for the respect that we cannot live off of the plants and fruits that we can harvest in the short arctic summers.
The people now only kill for the sake of eating meat, when they can now go to the store and buy what they need. Natives dont NEED to kill them anymore, what they need to do is Respect the animals that let us live for 100's of years. And that is not using a small bomb launched from a harpoon gun.
Vincent unfortunately the Sea Shepherds are the only ones who are really trying and who are actually capable of stopping the whaling. They've sunk 7 (or 9?) illegal whaling and illegal fishing vessels (without hurting any people). Governments just let whaling continue because they don't want to jeapardise trade relations
Did you know that sonar is actually the least threatening out of seven factors as stated in a recent UN study? (www.unep.org). Commercial fishing threatens 70+% of marine mammals, pollution 56%, etc, etc. and only then do you get down to sonar at only 4%.
Also, NOAA reports that there have been no conclusive links between US Navy sonar and any marine mammal strandings since March 2000 (out of the 18,000+ stranidngs since that time.
The Japanese kill more marine mammals in one year that all the sonar added up in history. I think we need to ficus on the real problem- commercial fishing and pollution. Blaming Navy sonar is just a ploy by the fishing industry and big business to keep us distracted!