(AU) Straight to whaling's heart

[Guest guest]

Straight to whaling's heart

Andrew Darby

The Age

August 4, 2007

 

THE sperm cow was snow white. She'd been seen for a few years with a pod off

Albany, Western Australia, where they called her the Judas whale. The whalers

easily followed the underwater glow. Year after year they exploited her

unwitting betrayal as she swam with a darker-coloured herd, sparing her so she

would come back again as telltale.

 

Then, the master/gunner Kase van der Gaag, admitted: " I shot it. Aargh, I'm not

proud of it. It was 32 feet (9.75 metres). It was ghostly white. We were chasing

cows and I could have shot another one. Oh, and it happened when Greenpeace was

here. It was stupid to do.

 

" It was never mentioned anywhere. The other thing is that even if I didn't like

killing them, as long as the company paid me, I killed as many whales as I

could. Or I should move on. "

 

A long and globe-girdling line of whalers ended with the Albany men. It began in

the 18th century with British fortune hunters and ran through American colonials

and the factory whalers of the Antarctic. Adventurers from Australia and New

Zealand who set up shore stations on their own coasts — all were antecedents.

After the Albany men there were no more industrial whalers in the

English-speaking world.

 

They were a bunch of strays who ended up in a forgotten corner of the globe. Van

der Gaag was a restless Dutch ocean tugboatman. Another master/gunner, Paddy

Hart, had his steel beaten in through a Dublin Catholic upbringing.

 

They had status not just in the boat, where the master/gunner was supreme, but

in the town. The whalers were seen as the hard men, the way that Australians

once looked to a line of sheep shearers to rank masculinity. But by the time

Albany whaling ended in 1978, Herman Melville's fabulous destructive white

whale, Moby Dick, had long been replaced by the Judas whale. The romantic

struggle became a mechanised rout, veiled by fake nostalgia.

 

The era ended as Australians' feelings for whales turned. Through it emerged a

new rationale about how we should treat these animals. Some of these men who

whaled survive to tell the truth about what they did. They know what it means to

hunt whales today, and particularly, what it means for the whales to be hunted

by Japan tomorrow — the Australian humpbacks.

 

Postwar whaling began in Albany as a tearaway adventure in a port town far from

anywhere. The local whalers bought a war-surplus plywood launch and bolted a

makeshift cannon to the bow. Ineptly they targetted slow inshore swimming

humpbacks, winching them onto a local beach where the locals learned flensing

(stripping off blubber and skin) by trial and error.

 

The muscular struggle evolved into the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company, which

cobbled together a small fleet of used chasers boats and a processing factory on

shore, targeting sperm whales.

 

" I thought it was a great adventure, " said Paddy Hart. " At the time, I'll be

quite honest with you, I never give any consideration to conservation, anything

like that. I was caught up in the thrill of it. "

 

They whaled over a 10-month season. The first ship out of the wide King George

Sound each dawn turned to run above the continental shelf about 20 miles

offshore. Others ranked themselves seaward, line abreast, a few miles apart.

 

Below, the shelf is steeply incised with a series of long subsea gorges,

including the 40-kilometre-wide Albany Canyon, which runs 3975 metres deep to

the abysmal plain. Sperm hunted these waterways for squid.

 

The chasers steamed east to meet the whales, which invariably swam west, heading

from the Great Australian Bight to the Indian Ocean. In these waters, sperm

often moved in mixed herds. A bull had his " harem " . His much greater size, proud

head and long log of a back made him easily visible at the surface.

 

There was no " there she blows " from the Albany whalers. More likely an oath and

a compass bearing would be cast in the whales' direction. The whalers would try

for the bull, and saw many flee.

 

Flight wasn't a universal reaction though. Van der Gaag was slowly ticking his

ship in closer behind one very big bull when it turned around and headed towards

the vessel.

 

" The biggest bull I ever … well, he's getting bigger all the time, " van der Gaag

said.

 

" He had his mouth right open, but only the point of his nose out of the water. I

could have shot him in the head, but for a start you lose a whole lot of

spermaceti out of his head, and you don't kill. So I thought I would let him

go. "

 

The master/gunner watched as the bull slowly turned side-on and looked up at

him, then slid under the hull and came up behind the stern. Some sperm seemed to

deliberately do that; resist panic and instead survive by using the ship itself

as a shield.

 

" We had it once seven times with the same whale. We just couldn't get him. I

think the sperm whale is very clever. "

 

Paid a bonus per barrel, the whalers would always look for the largest animal.

" No. 1 you get close to 10 tonne of oil from a 50-foot (15-metre) bull, " Hart

said. " Whereas your 35-foot (11-metre) cow, you get two or three tonne. And it's

a lot harder to kill a cow than it is a bull.

 

" Those sperm whales, you could shoot 'em in the head all day, you could shoot

'em in the bum all day, you will make a difference eventually, " Hart said. " The

shot you want is just behind the pectoral (fins). The thing is, you use the same

harpoon all the time; the same weight, grenade, powder. With a cow what could

happen, even if you get it in the pectorals, is that the grenade would blow

outside the whale.

 

" The right shot works, the wrong shot doesn't. Everybody tries for the right

shot. It made life easier. Better for the whale, better for you. But cows were

hard to kill. I don't think any of us really liked even the thought of shooting

them. "

 

In truth, the Albany chasers, like those of today, were built to deal, as a

matter of course, with a whale that did not die instantly.

 

They were equipped to slowly reel in a thrashing whale, like a trout on a rod.

The harpoon line ran through pulleys and springs, winches and compensators, that

played out the forces of a whale hooked by harpoon barbs and maddened by pain.

 

Multiple harpoons were often needed. The ship was moving, the whale was moving,

and a total miss was not unusual.

 

" The notion that there was one shot almost never happens, van der Gaag said. " I

think you will find that the average number of shots per animal was at least

three, maybe four. It's cruel. There's no doubt about it. But it is exciting.

The hunt is exciting. I've killed about 1000 whales. I never counted them. I

don't count them. I don't. "

 

Albany's whaling was rounded off 30 years ago this month by an early Greenpeace

protest. A bunch of hippies with a social conscience and sense of adventure made

the trip from the east coast to protest on the water. They were backed by the

foreign cash of a French environmentalist, Jean-Paul Fortom-Gouin, and led by a

Canadian founder of Greenpeace, Robert Hunter.

 

Albany was angry at the interfering greenies; there were dangerous clashes on

the water and few whales were actually saved. But the protests and media

coverage woke Australians to the whaling at our own back door.

 

" They believed in what they were doing, " said van der Gaag. " I talked a lot to

that Bob Hunter. I talked also to that Frenchman and he was totally obsessed

with saving whales. So we talked. He said the sperm has got the biggest brain in

existence. Their language is very complicated. Anyway I wasn't ever happy to

kill them. That really gave me the push. I left in October. "

 

Van der Gaag had seen the future. It unfolded for others through an inquiry to

recommend the best way to " preserve and conserve " whales, and decide whether

Australian whaling should " continue or cease " . The gold that royal commissioner

Sir Sydney Frost dug up in this inquiry was on the ethical treatment of whales.

A bushy moustached young philosophy professor at Monash University in Melbourne

sent his submission to Frost. Ethicist Peter Singer wasted none of his 1000

words explaining what whales were, what whaling was and why it was ethically

indefensible.

 

Whales, he said, were social mammals with exceptionally large brains, capable of

enjoying life and of feeling physical pain much as we do. Whaling could cause

feelings akin to grief among them; their killing was often neither quick, nor

painless; and it was not required for any important human need.

 

Ethically, Singer said, animals should not be killed or made to suffer

significant pain except when an overriding need could not be met any other way.

So it followed that whaling should stop, particularly because of whales' often

slow and painful deaths.

 

In Frost's report, what tore at his conscience was the " most horrible " method

used to kill whales.

 

" Our conclusion then, as to whether the method used to bring about the death of

a whale is inhumane or not, does not admit of doubt. " Whaling should stop

because of " the special nature of the whale itself, including the real

possibility that we are dealing with a creature which has a remarkably developed

brain and a high degree of intelligence " .

 

The then prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, banned the practice, and Australia

became a trenchant anti-whaling nation. Life for the whalers diminished. Kase

van der Gaag went away to drive tugs, but eventually came back to Albany, his

" best place in the world " .

 

He lived alone with household animals. I watched him lean out of his car to

politely ask a miniature pony to move so that he could use the driveway. The

pony wasn't inclined. So the man who shot 1000 whales sat there, car engine

idling, waiting in slight embarrassment for the animal to amble away in its own

good time.

 

Paddy Hart had a hard time of it. There was no cushioning financial package when

the Cheynes Beach factory shut.

 

" I think we were bushwacked, " he said. With five children, he needed work. The

man who had commanded a ship and fired a harpoon went to work on a cattle

feedlot, then as a boiler attendant in a woollen mill. Eventually he retired

happy with his family and big garden, where he battled to save the goldfish in

his pond from raiding birds.

 

He sees whaling as a necessary evil of the past. " I'd hate to think that they

would start whaling again, " he said. " Look, there's no reason to, is there?

There's absolutely no reason. They're really beautiful creatures. I know I've

done a 180-degree turn. But now I just don't see the need to do it. "

 

Van der Gaag is annoyed that Japan whales now. " They don't have to. A couple of

Eskimos killing them, that is understandable. But the Japanese don't need to.

They should stop. "

 

He believes that Japanese whalers will have little trouble approaching

Australian humpbacks in the Antarctic, where 50 are to be harpooned in the

coming summer.

 

" Because they haven't been chased, they are very trusting. They come and have a

look at boats. But if they are being killed, their behaviour will change. That

happened with sperm whales. They got very flighty over only a couple of seasons.

For the whale-watching business in Australia, it won't make it any easier. "

 

And despite advances in harpoons and explosive grenades, van der Gaag's view of

the likely cruelty of humpback whaling is unchanged.

 

" It's just as difficult to kill a humpback with a first shot, as it is a sperm

whale. "

 

Andrew Darby is The Age Hobart correspondent.

 

This is an edited extract from his book Harpoon. Into the heart of whaling,

published yesterday by Allen & Unwin. RRP $29.95.

-----------------------------

The Last Whale blog

 

November 3, 2007

By Chris Pash

 

Thirty years ago Jonny Lewis and Kase Van Der Gaag were locked in a duel in the

Southern Ocean off Western Australia.

 

Jonny was hell-bent on saving sperm whales from explosive head harpoons. Kase,

the master and harpoon gunner of the Cheynes II, wanted to lead Jonny’s five

metre rubber Zodiac boat away from the other two 47 metre steel chaser ships.

 

Today they stood together at Middleton Beach, Albany, and spoke for the humpback

whales who will shortly face harpoons from the Japanese whaling fleet in the

Antarctic.

 

Jonny, a photographer and a Greenpeace founder, and Kase, the retired whaling

ship captain, took centre stage at Fight for Fifty, a national program by IFAW

(the International Fund for Animal Welfare).

 

The Japanese whaling fleet will soon depart for the Antarctic and harpoon 50

humpback whales. Some of the catch may include humpbacks seen and recognised by

Australian whale watchers on the east and west coast of Australia.

 

......

 

http://thelastwhale.blogspot.com/2007/11/whaling-ship-captains-defend-humpbacks.\

html