The first time I ever became fascinated with whales was on a visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Prior to that, I had read with fascination Moby-Dick. The movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home only increased my love of whales. When I lived in New Hampshire, I took a trip to Cape Cod and rode a whale watching boat from Provincetown to Martha's Vineyard just to get another experience about whales under my belt.
For centuries, whales have been seen in contradictory ways: as awe-inspiring and beautiful animals, but also as objects from which human beings can extract a great profit. D.H. Lawrence took the first approach in his 1909 poem “Whales Weep Not!”
They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of the sea!
Herman Melville - who includes the following quote from Obed Macy's 1835 History of Nantucket, "In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for bread." - among the many extracts with which he begins Moby-Dick, depicts, in his narrator Ishmael, a young whaler constantly drawn in both directions. At first Ishmael accepts the industry of whaling. But as he sees whales up close, wondrous and mysterious beings, he becomes increasingly, if inconstantly, critical of harpoon whaling and the greed for consumer products that drives it. Those products have included meat; whale oil from blubber, useful for many purposes, such as lighting lamps and making margarine; sperm whale oil, a valuable lubricant for machines and, in our own time, for intercontinental ballistic missiles; and baleen, or “whale bone,” used for corsets, combs, and countless other products.
Greed drives the whole enterprise of Melville’s Pequod, goading its crew to gratuitous acts of sadistic cruelty. As they stab and torment the already dying whale, the moderate Starbuck pleads with them for pity. (Starbuck, a corporate man in his time, and perhaps a fitting ancestor of the corporation that bears his name, is not opposed to greed or to what Ishmael surprisingly calls the “murder” of the whale, only to useless excesses of torture.)
Contemporary international law is pulled, like Ishmael, in both directions, one faction trying to end lethal cruelty to whales, the other seeking only to preserve whale “stocks” for future exploitation. This was also the case in the 1950s when, goaded by the bureaucracy’s demands for higher and higher quotas, Soviet whalers conducted an illegal mass whale slaughter even as they learned more and more about the social intelligence and emotional complexity of their prey.
Whale products are far less needed than they used to be, with the advent of electric lights and alternative lubricants and oils. We live in a buoying time when the powerful greed motive has somewhat abated, and there is now a real possibility that the compassion long lurking can actually prevail. Sperm whale oil was not used for the anointing of King Charles III, as it had been used for British monarchs going back for centuries. Instead, Charles arranged to be anointed with olive oil made from fruit harvested on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, near where his Greek grandmother Princess Alice is buried. It seems that Charles’s environmental awareness, once thought an unmanly kind of foolishness, is now widely admired, and indeed is one of his most endearing characteristics. Even American missiles are now “anointed” with other lubricants.
In his vivid and sober Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling, the historian Ryan Tucker Jones observes that whales are utterly unlike the pigs, cows, and chickens raised in the factory farming industry. Those animals, thoroughly under human control from birth, are forced into lives so diminished, so deprived of social interaction and free movement, that it is easy for both workers and consumers to see them as mere objects for use. But whales have always had lives of their own: social relationships, free movement. They are increasingly imperiled and yet still visible as complicated individual creatures. It is almost impossible to see them up close and not be moved.
Especially well known to human observers, and studied in both group and individual settings, are the orcas (large-toothed whales sometimes known as “killer whales”) who roam in the Salish Sea off the coast of British Columbia and the state of Washington. Whale scientists have given every orca there a name and a biography, periodically updated by Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island. These whales are the focus of conservation policy manager Nora Nickum’s new book, Superpod: Saving the Endangered Orcas of the Pacific Northwest.
Among the many stories she offers, my favorite - and an indelible example of orca emotional complexity - is that of Tahlequah, an orca now 25 years old. In 2018, having already given birth to one healthy calf, she bore another - tail-first, as whales are always born, in order for the cold water to harden the tail and fin to prepare them for immediate swimming, since they must swim to the surface to take their first breath. But this baby took only a few breaths and then died. It lived at most 30 minutes.
Tahlequah, however, kept the 400-pound dead baby with her, balancing it on her head and periodically raising it up to the surface to breathe; sometimes she carried it on her back or in her mouth. She seemed to lack the energy to eat. People all over the world came to know of this grieving mother and, through her story, of orca individuality and complexity. From time to time, she was seen without the baby, most likely because other orcas of her pod were helping her bear the burden. She traveled more than 1,000 miles before, on the 17th day, she let it go, whether because her mourning had reached a new phase or because the body had begun to decompose. She regained her strength, and two years later she bore a healthy calf, named Phoenix by the researchers because he had in a way risen from the ashes of her mourning.
This is the sort of behavior the Soviet whalers had observed, even while slaughtering mothers and babies in violation of international law. Although Ishmael’s optimistic prediction that whales will not follow the buffalo on their road to extinction has proved barely correct (and indeed he was wrong about the buffalo, or American bison, now rebounding thanks to conservation efforts), they are still dying in large numbers all over the world. Some species, like North Atlantic right whale and the resident orcas of the Salish Sea, are critically endangered, although other species, like the humpback whale and other types of orcas, have been rebounding in recent years, thanks to an international moratorium on most whale hunts.
Harpooning continues, despite the recent decline in demand for whales. (What remains of the market is mainly for meat, still sold in restaurants in Nordic countries.) Norway killed 580 whales in 2022 and has reportedly hunted 15,000 since a moratorium was established in 1986. Japan’s number goes up and down with no clear trend: 270 in 2022, down from a high of 640 in 2018, but that was after several years of lower “takes,” and Japan has announced the intention of ramping up its whaling industry. The country has even introduced whale meat “vending machines” to stimulate sales. Iceland ended whaling last year due to lack of demand. Meanwhile, it killed 148 whales in 2022. The United States contributes too, through Inuit hunts of beluga and bowhead whales off Alaska, though numbers are hard to come by.
What is wrong with whaling? Let me begin with the obvious: it ends prematurely the lives of these complex sentient animals, using them as objects from which humans can extract meat, oil, and other useful products. But that is what is wrong with the killing of most animals for food. Defenders of whaling often point this out, charging their adversaries with hypocrisy. The charge may be true in some cases, but pointing to a comparable evil hardly justifies the one under scrutiny.
It can certainly be added that harpooning is a horrible death. It is very difficult to kill whales, because they are so huge and so well protected by layers of blubber. Finding the vital organs often requires repeated strikes. Nobody describes this better than Melville.
Today’s harpooners use not lances but guns that shoot an exploding bullet into the whale, similar to the weapon that killed the leviathan in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. These are said to be more humane, but death still can take hours.
Over the years two factions have emerged. For one faction, content to use whales as means to human ends, the only evil to be prevented is the extinction of one or more species, thus the cessation of (one part of) a lucrative industry. Those who hold this view typically speak of “whale stocks,” as if individual whales were insignificant. But for others, and for me, the evil is the needless and cruel deaths of individual whales. The species matters because continued reproduction and diversity are usually essential for individual health and flourishing, including social interaction.
Much hunting of whales, including hunts conducted by United States whalers, is regulated by a treaty signed in 1946, International Convention for Regulation of Whaling. This convention set up a monitoring group, International Whaling Commission. The treaty, it should be said, regulated only its member nations, so a nation can escape its restrictions by refusing to join, or joining with reservations, or quitting.
This was aimed not at ending the killing of whales but at sustainable use. Referring to whales as a resource suggests that whales are seen as objects for human utility. And indeed, when the convention was drafted, there was no thought of banning commercial whaling entirely: the goal was a quota system for each member nation. Two forms of whaling were explicitly permitted outside the announced quotas: aboriginal whaling and whaling “for scientific purposes.” Both then and now, the treaty regulates only its member nations. With these provisions in place, the stage was set for stagnation.
Initially, commercial whaling was permitted, with quotas and careful monitoring procedures. In 1982, however, a complete moratorium on commercial whaling was instituted. Intended to be temporary until “stocks” recovered, the moratorium endures, since there has been no agreement about circumstances that would justify resumption of whaling. This disagreement has only intensified: some members have increasingly shifted to an animal-rights viewpoint, with a general ethical objection to whaling, while others are eager to resume the commercial practice. Enforcement has always been weak, since the treaty gives each nation the task of disciplining its own whalers. In Norway and Iceland, legal commercial whaling operations continue.
Other nations, meanwhile, exploit the exceptions granted under the treaty. The purpose of the scientific exception was to understand whale biology. Just as medical students gain knowledge by dissection, so too it was thought that knowledge of the whale required whale cadavers. But it was reasoned that whale cadavers were typically lost in the deep and that the occasional beached whale might not be representative of her species. So, killing for research, some nations argued, is required.
Appeals to scientific purpose, especially those by Japan, have been unpersuasive. In March 2014 International Court of Justice ruled that Japan’s program of scientific whaling in the Antarctic was not justifiable under international law, because it did not have merit as a scientific program. The court pointed to the lack of scientific findings and peer-reviewed studies from it. Many environmental organizations saw the entire practice as commercial whaling in disguise. It is difficult to disagree.
Japan, however, did not give up.
The decision by International Court was cautious. It did not address claims that whales have a right to life, and it defined the purpose of the organization as that of balancing conservation with sustainable exploitation. Nor did it object to the idea of giving special permits for scientific research; it only said that Japan’s program did not qualify.
The issue is now moot, because Japan, frustrated by the growing opposition it faced left the commission in December 2018 and resumed commercial whaling in 2019, although not in the Antarctic. In 2020 it conceded that its genuine scientific work does not require whale death. New technology has made it possible to study whales up close without killing them, using deep-sea descent equipment and especially deep-sea photography.
As for the aboriginal exception, the claim of sustenance is unconvincing, since the whale meat caught thereby often ends up on restaurant menus in Greenland, a wealthy nation. The claim of cultural expression has always been weak, since culture has never justified gross evils (for example rape and genocide), and whale killing ought to count as one. Moreover, certain large indigenous groups, such as the Maori in New Zealand, have strongly opposed whale hunting.
Driven by grandiose five-year plans and their invitations to overreach, Soviet whalers found a way to conduct a genocide of whales in the Antarctic, simply by targeting an area that nobody was watching.
The industry was unprofitable at first. (Among other things, whaling vessels had inadequate equipment to boil down the blubber into oil, so carcasses lay around until they were useless and rats overran the ship.) By the late 1950s the equipment had improved and there was some genuine need for whale products. Eventually the mass slaughter in the area of Antarctica called Area V made whaling one of the most successful and destructive industries in all of Russia.
Slowly, the scientists educated the whalers about whales’ capacities for emotion, play, and altruism. And the crew could see these capacities themselves. These many Ishmaels brought their news and their guilt back home, until even children’s books portrayed whales with realistic and moving complexity. By 1970 there was better adherence to quotas, and international observers were stationed on whaling ships starting in 1971.
Sound is of immense importance for all whales, far more than sight or smell. The use of hydrophones by researchers reveals a busy world of complicated interactions. Whales send sonic messages about the location of food, and they keep track of one another across huge distances, leading a cohesive group life despite their separation. And sometimes they make sounds for sheer pleasure - the famous singing of humpback whales (as portrayed in Star Trek IV) is only one instance of their varied self-expression.
This web of sound has suffered, in recent years, from an onslaught of human noise. It is difficult enough to carry on a meaningful conversation in a loud restaurant, not to mention concert. Whales, unlike humans, have neither hearing aids nor the possibility of choosing a quiet place for conversation. Huge container ships, each the size of a skyscraper turned on its side, roam the world, with propellers that make a din. Oil rigs, needing to chart the ocean’s floor, send down air bombs at regular intervals, and the militaries of many nations use sonar to search for enemies.
Sonar is especially scary to whales. Other noises also cause stress. A fascinating finding is that in the year following the September 11 attacks - a period in which global shipping basically stopped - whales showed a sharp reduction in stress.
North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered, their breeding opportunities so rare and compromised that every new birth is greeted as a victory. Populations have declined sharply during the past decade: according to current estimates, there are just 340 alive today, including only 70 breeding females. (There are three distinct species of right whales; North Pacific right whales are also endangered, whereas many populations of southern right whales are doing pretty well.)
The general public is culpably ignorant of the harms in which they participate. These problems can be solved. Collisions with ships obviously cause injury and often painful death, especially in the crowded coastal areas that are frequented by right whales. The United States government has so far shown little responsiveness to whales’ plight. But public concern can make a difference.
Entanglements are caused largely by the lines used by lobster fishers to retrieve their pots from the ocean floor. When a whale begins to be entangled in such a rope, the animal’s natural response is to spin around in order to free itself. But this causes the whale to get more and more entangled - until it is swimming, sometimes for months, tied up in the rope, which cuts painfully into the whale’s flesh.
The best way forward is to investigate, and ultimately to require, other gear: lines that detach easily or, better still, a new retrieval system for lobster traps, for example by acoustic signals, a method currently used for retrieval in some areas.
Whales depend for life and food on water, and all Earth’s waterways are today polluted. One terrible danger for every whale species is the presence of plastics in our oceans, mainly discarded single-use items. Alas, only a tiny percentage of single-use plastic items are actually recycled, even if left curbside for recycling: probably less than 10 percent, as contrasted with 60 percent for cans.
When I refuse to use plastic straws, I am usually looked at with disdain. One of the hazards of living in a land-locked state, I suppose. Or, since one of Trump's pet peeves regards the use of paper straws, I am considered a tree hugger or a left-wing radical. I am neither, actually. I just care about the plight of whales and understand that plastic straws kill whales.
Plastic is attractive to whales. It looks like food, and indeed when eaten gives a sensation of fullness, but offers no nutrition. And it simply stays in the digestive tract until eventually there is no room for actual food.
This is a problem we can successfully confront, although it will mean not only phasing out single-use plastic but also cleaning up what is already out there. Even a landfill is a better place for plastics to end up than the ocean. Individuals should ask questions of their cities and institutions, tracing the destination of “recycled” products. And increasingly, responsible hotels are choosing cans and, better yet, reusable metal bottles.
Meanwhile, we need to be aware of the damage done during wartime by the sudden destruction of dams and other infrastructure that release enormous amounts of pollutants into ocean waters.
Orcas in the Salish Sea are especially beloved for their keen intelligence, their attractiveness, and their family bonds, and are endangered. These orcas are highly vulnerable to kidnapping. Young orcas are seized from their families to do tricks in marine theme parks.
Because orcas learn socially, mainly from the postmenopausal “grannies” in their group who devote their time to education, the young captives have no idea of proper behavior. This had lethal consequences in the case of Tilikum, the orca in Florida’s SeaWorld Orlando who killed his trainer in 2010, causing public outrage and eventually leading SeaWorld to give up orca displays. In 2016 California passed its Orca Protection Act, which makes the use of captive orcas for entertainment and captive breeding illegal.
There is only one resident orca from the Salish Sea still alive in captivity, a female called Tokitae. She was captured in 1970 and renamed Lolita by her captors; she has lived in a small tank in Miami Seaquarium for 50 years. Lummi Nation of Washington have taken up her cause, referring to her under the name Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut. They believe that she is related to the oldest resident orca currently living in the Salish Sea, Ocean Sun, who is around 95. Since Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut is a healthy 55-year-old, her supporters believe it plausible for her to be released back to the Salish Sea. They are energetically working for that outcome.
The kidnapping has stopped, but today only 73 resident orcas are alive. Orcas in other parts of the world are doing well, as are those called transient orcas, who often visit the Salish Sea. Yet genetic analysis shows that they have not mated with the resident orcas for thousands of years, offering little hope for replenishment that way.
Although similar in intelligence and behavior, the two types differ greatly in diet. Transient orcas primarily hunt seals and sea lions, which used to be endangered but have now recovered thanks to Marine Mammal Protection Act. Resident orcas eat only fish and have specialized further, eating only Chinook salmon. These salmon are full of dangerous chemicals that are now illegal but lurk in the ecosystem. They give the orcas reproductive and other health issues. Researchers are hopeful that this problem will abate with time, just as enforcing speed limits on boats has kept noise and boat collisions under control. (Even whale-watching boats can be part of the problem.)
But there is another issue for the resident orcas: Chinook salmon, their diet, themselves are currently having difficulty migrating because of a series of dams that prevent them from swimming upstream. They are not breeding well, and this affects the orcas, each of whom needs 300 to 450 pounds of food a day. Some orcas already appear undernourished.
Again, the vigilance and concern of the community has been quick to address the problem. In 2003 a “fish ladder” was constructed that permitted salmon to bypass the century-old Landsburg Dam on Cedar River, resting in a pool on each stair before jumping to the next. With new methods of generating electricity, dams are not as irreplaceable as they once were.
I have no mystical beliefs, but my own view is that each individual life is what matters.
I feel a sense of connectedness to orcas and their world and a new determination to focus on what I can do to contribute. Each individual being loves in its own way.
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