Struggling To Protect An Endangered Species

[Guest guest]

Botswana: Struggling To Protect An Endangered Species

Sheridan Griswold

4 December 2009

 

 

 

 

 

This is a very important book in the struggle to save the oceans, its oldest creatures and all the rest of life in the sea. "The remaining whales are threatened by Japanese whaling in restricted waters, by heavy metals, global warming pollution, longlines, drift nets, low frequency sonar, ship strikes; 300,000 whales and small cetaceans are killed every year by tangling in fishing gear or as by catch ... the grey whales need at least 50 years to recover, but even then, their survival is tenuous. The earth's whales simply cannot endure another period of open commercial whaling" (page 99).

Thus empowered, Paul Watson, the Canadian founder of Green Peace in 1972, in 1977 broke away to start the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to have more direct interventions against illegal exploitation of the oceans. This story of the Farley Mowat's attempt to stop the Japanese fishing fleet on one journey into Antarctic oceans is a thrilling tale of one impassioned voice trying to halt the most flagrant law breakers, the huge Nisshin Maru and its smaller fleet of feeder ships.

Peter Heller introduces the whole crew, an impressive list of highly qualified people who are going to put their lives on the line, but only three of them are paid crew. "That night two humpback whales swam directly at the ship while I was sleeping. The crew on watch said they dived and passed under. Just under. They surfaced and blew six feet from the low main deck. Justin said they raised their heads out of the water and opened their mouths and made an unearthly sound. "What kind of sound?" I asked him "I don't know dude. Like nothing I ever heard. It raised goosebumps. I'm not religious kind of guy but it was mystical" (page 138).

 

 

We are deeply touched by the stories of grateful whales who were helped out of entrapment, who then thanked the rescuers by nudging each one of them in thanks; or who were being speared by harpoons and even so saved the life of the man trying to intercept the harpooners - the message conveyed with a dying giant eye. Those people say they will never be the same!

Some of them were on this trip in the Farley Mowat in 2005, heading out of Melbourne towards Hobart, Tasmania, on December 23. Heller goes day by day, hour by hour even, with exact GPS positions, making the action very concrete and dramatic as he moves around the ship, at times describing the awesome sea and the albatross riding the 12-metre waves in one interminable gale. The stark beauty of the sea off Antarctica, the ice floes and a brief break for swimming off one, were memorable.

 

 

"Humpbacks make 622 social sounds. New research has found spindle neurons in the brains of humpbacks, fins, orcas, and sperm whales. Previously thought to be unique to humans, these specialised cells are located in areas of the human brain associated with social organisation, empathy, speech, and intuition. They are thought to process emotions and are the cells responsible for feelings of love, grief and suffering. They found that the whales' spindle neurons reside in the same are of the brain as those in humans, that they have existed in whales' brains much longer than in ours, and that whales have proportionally three times more of the cells than we do. Not only are whale brains larger than ours; they have four lobes to our three, and have more convolutios in the neocortex" (page 139).

Paul Watson sat in his captain's chair often firing off news bulletins and informing his staff of the background: treaties and laws all seemed to mean nothing: CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna, pronounces fin whales and humpbacks endangered, but the Japanese were targeting fin whales that year (2006) and humpbacks the next (2007). The IWC, International Whaling Commission, forbids the use of factory ships to process any protected stock-totally disregarded of course. Protected stocks list baleen whales, including minke, fin and humpbacks.

 

 

Watson had been involved in stopping Icelandic whalers and his campaign against English, Irish and Scottish seal hunts had shut them down. The slaughter of Canadian seals in massive hunts was halted in 1984 for 10 years. Several of his Green Peace colleagues had joined him in taking up more drastic action, mocking the non-violent uselessness of just painting on the offending ships and standing by to watch the ruthless killing of these wise, ancient animals. Contact is established with one "leak" on the much bigger and better equipped Rainbow Warrior at a crucial point in the long chase after the Japanese fleet. He was sending the GPS and direction and speed of the whalers, to help Farley Mowat crew. It is a huge ocean to hunt in and Watson is a master at guessing their thinking and still calculating his chances in certain weather conditions. They had a helicopter on board and in still weather they went up to survey the area within 80 miles or so. During a gale it was highly stressed, as the ice formed on the whole ship.

The crew was fed a vegan diet and most of them believed they ought not to eat fish or meat. The whale meat in Japan was being fed to children in school lunches, though research had shown that the whole venture was uneconomical, people did not like whale meat and it was contaminated with mercury to boot. This made it all the more horrifying what their so-called research boat was doing.

When they began to approach a whaler many busied themselves with making various kinds of equipment to destroy the propeller with tangling rope or wire or creating a ramming instrument to attach to the front of the Farley Mowat when making contact. There was a serious intent to destroy the fishing fleet's functions, but not to endanger life.

That was often in question - at the sight of their threatening tools, the giant Japanese ship could have sliced the Farley Mowat in half several times, but knowing they were in flagrant illegal activity they backed away; this is what Watson counted on.

In one section Heller tells about a memory he has of playing with an adolescent sea lion in the Sea of Cortez, when he was crewing on a sailboat, with a mask and snorkel and flippers: "They began doing flips and the seal lion grabbed hold of his flippers and they circled each other and cavorted around for a good while...many, many have experienced the intelligence and delight in play of these animals"... "If the oceans are dying in our time and we kill them, which is what we are doing, we shall have committed a crime so heinous, we shall never be redeemed" (page 250

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