Tag: whaling

Going to War Against Fisherman

Last week I made mention of the International Whaling Commission’s moratorium on whaling, which has now been in effect for over 25 years. I observed that Japanese and Norwegian fisherman regularly violate the moratorium and continue to hunt whales on what they term “research” expeditions. The moratorium excludes traditional whale hunts for certain native tribes in the North Atlantic; however, the quotas for these traditional hunts have inflated from a few dozen to several hundred whales as the black market demand for whale meat has grown with the moratorium.

In the absence of standardized law and enforcement on international waters, militant environmental groups with abolitionist views toward destructive fishing practices have taken to harassing fishing vessels found to be in violation of resolutions of the United Nations Environmental Programme. Dangerous sea battles have resulted when the two sides have met in the open ocean. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society documents many of its confrontations with fishermen in documentary films, books and now a reality television show that airs on Animal Planet.
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The other day, while I was at my job and supposed to be working, I watched an hour or so of one of the Sea Shepherd documentaries. I was surprised at how belligerent the fishermen were whom they encountered. I watched footage of fishing trawlers attacking Greenpeace vessels that were present at whale catches to peacefully observe. Many of the Sea Shepherd people were former Greenpeace members who had grown tired of the group’s program on unconditional non-violence. The Sea Shepherds ram whaling ships they meet at sea. They sabotage ships they find in port. They board small fishing boats and take the fishermen hostage. This article by Richard Spillman for the Huffington Post is fairly representative of the left’s disapproval of the Sea Shepherd Conservancy’s militant tactics. I can’t imagine that the Sea Shepherds could even begin to care about what the political mainstream thinks about what they are doing. The whole basis for abandoning nonviolence is that you no longer have to worry about public relations. You are no longer waiting for the public to hear you and to react in favor of your agenda. Violent protest effects its own change. When the Sea Shephards encounter a drift net at sea, they do not report it to the coast guard or local media and wait for the conditions that caused or allowed the fisherman who cast the net to change. They pull the net up immediately and ambush the boat when they come back to collect it.

You can donate to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society here. Since the SSCS is considered a terroristic organization and engages in destruction of property, your donation will not be tax deductible.

Amnesty Between Whale and Man

There are few stories of whale attacks in early maritime lore. After the rise of commercial whaling in the 17th century, reports of whale pods antagonizing shipping lanes in the North Atlantic became common. It was normal for whales to attack harpoon boats out of self-defense. The fight of the whale was a custom of the trade. But, as if out of spite and a desire for retribution, certain whale species would sometimes strike peaceful merchant vessels which were not in any way involved in the whaling. For much of modern history, it was considered unsafe to swim in waters where whales were present. Often, if they found a diver, they would try to bite him in two or shatter his bones with a tail swipe. This seems, however, no longer to be the case. Whale attacks are a thing of the past. We now hear stories of how whales have saved people in the open ocean. They do not attach boats anymore, but can be seen following in their wake and breaking the surface of the water without fear.

Whaling remained a regular practice when finally, in 1986, responding to dwindling stocks and near eradication of some species, the International Whaling Commission instituted a ban on commercial whaling in order to allow the population to recover. Every coastal nation agreed to enforce the ban, with Norway and Japan being the ignoble exceptions. In the years since the ban went into effect, the big whale species have become recognizably more docile when encountered by human beings. One must wonder: perhaps whales have something like a shared cultural memory. Perhaps they warn each other about human beings above the water and describe us as enemies. Maybe they pass this information on to future generations. And maybe, when given peace and freedom from threat, they are able to reciprocate.

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Most marine biologists are hesitant to identify in whales that level of sentience. It is known that many whale species possess incredible cognitive capacity and exhibit more brain activity than human beings. We know that they communicate and that individuals seem to have unique behaviors and expressions. We’ve witnessed them engaging in what appears to be play with other species. One could conjecture that they might form opinions and knowledge about the world that is learned and subject to alteration.

Humpback whale lifting dolphin out of the water… just for fun:

Industrial Whaling

In my last post I mentioned how during the 17th and 19th century piano soundboards were fashioned out of whale bone. This should not at all be surprising given the many consumer products that were contrived from whale parts during the period of the piano’s invention and refinement. Like the mercantile slave trade and the cultivation of opium, commercial whaling is another proto-industrial enterprise that seems astonishing that people even considered doing it as a way of making money. It must have been a strange kind of avarice combined with remarkable invention that caused people to see in the thick sheet of fat blanketing big sea creatures a splendid fuel source and industrial lubricant.

The actual process of extracting blubber from the whale’s body and rendering oil would be cartoonish if it wasn’t so gruesome. After doing the long day’s work of killing the whale with a thousand tiny stab wounds, men would pull its carcass along side the ship and for the next 72 hours set about peeling blubber away from the body like an orange. First they would hack out the blanket piece, which is a strip of flesh and fat about five feet wide and six inches deep. They would attach it to a hook hanging off of the mast and use a wench mechanism to pull the blubber from the body. Meanwhile, two or three men would slash away at the connecting tissue between the fat and muscle. Slowly, they would turn the body in the water as they peeled away the blubber in a spiral. The weight of the blubber is so great that the boat tips toward it as the men crane it around over the deck.

After the blubber is removed from the body, the men then decapitate the whale. They hoist the head onto the ship’s deck and gauge a hole into its side from which the men ladle prized sperm oil into buckets on the deck.
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Whaling ships in the 18th and 19th centuries had iron furnaces installed on deck called tryworks. Pieces of blubber were thrown into the trypots. Under high heat, the fat would begin to liquefy. The flesh and fiber would char into carbon and float to the top of the caldrons. The whalers called this the “cracklins.” They would scoop them off the surface and feed them back to the fire.

Whaling vessels were like floating factories. They would remain at sea capturing whales and processing oil for years at a time. They returned to port with hundreds of barrels, which were immediately sold to merchants in New Bedford and Nantucket. The oil would be used in lamps and lanterns. It was the brightest burning fuel available. It burned hot and slow. Candles made from whale oil were said to be favored by Benjamin Franklin, who preferred writing by their light over standard paraffin.