by Farley Mowat
Late Thursday evening I had a call from one of them. He was polite, but the gist of his message was that the club was publicly dissociating itself from me and that, from this point forward, it would be concentrating its efforts on restoring the good name of Burgeo.
I wished him luck, and I sincerely meant it.
NOT UNTIL LATE Friday morning was the weather good enough to allow Claire and me to pay our last visit to Aldridges Pond. Once again it was a frigid day, with frost-smoke rising from the tickles and cat-ice cracking under the bow of Onie’s dory. Although it was a fine day for whale spotting, we saw none. There were no distant puffs of vapour hanging like exclamation marks above the dark-skinned sea. The calm waters of Short Reach were unbroken by the swirl of the Guardian’s great flukes. The surviving members of the family had vanished, and they were not seen again that winter nor, as far as I have heard, have they or any of their kind again returned to what was once their sanctuary among the Burgeo Islands.
It would have been a lifeless scene save that, far above the still waters of the Pond, three eagles soared on the updrafts over Richards Head. Like silent mourners, they drifted in the void of air above the void of sea. As I stared up at them, I thought how fitting it was that these masters of the aerial world, themselves already doomed, should have chosen this time and place to describe their majestic arabesques... For when I dropped my gaze we were in the Pond and there before us floated all that was left of one of the true masters of the sea, a portent of the almost certain extermination of the great whale nation.
Even after the lapse of years, I grieve to write about her as I saw her then. She had been immense in life—now she seemed twice as huge. She was floating on her back, high out of the water, and the pallid mountain of her swollen belly was like a capsized ship. From a being of transcendental majesty and grace she had been changed into an abomination; grotesque, deformed and horrible. She stank! She stank so frightfully that, as we cautiously approached her, we had to fight down our nausea.
The most revolting aspect of the scene before us lay in the final confirmation that she was female and, judging from the condition of her breasts, had been far advanced in pregnancy.
I do not know what Onie felt as we drifted beside the monstrous corpse; but Claire was quietly crying. I think we were all grateful for the distraction when the chugging of an engine announced the arrival of another boat.
It was a work boat, manned by three men from the fish plant. It came busily through the channel and, ignoring us, went directly to the whale. The men had handkerchiefs tied over their mouths and noses, giving them a sinister look. They worked quickly to secure a loop of wire cable around the whale’s tail just forward of the mighty flukes. Then the work boat, dwarfed to insignificance by her tow, put her stern down and white water foamed under her counter as she took the strain. Slowly, ponderously, the whale began to move. The bizarre cortege slowly drew abreast of us and turned into the mouth of the south channel.
And the great fin whale, who had been unable to pass that barrier alive, floated easily over it in death... returning, now that there was no return, to the heart of mystery from whence she came.
To Make Amends
BEFORE THAT MOST RAPACIOUS OF predators, the human animal, set about annihilating them in earnest during the seventeenth century, the eight species of great whales are believed to have numbered as many as 4.5 million individuals.
By 1930, three centuries later, they had been reduced to about 1.5 million.
By 2004, there were estimated to be no more than 350,000 survivors.
One race, the Atlantic grey, which was known as the scrag whale to the New Englanders who destroyed it, became extinct even before science realized it existed. Three others: the southern right, or Biscayen, the northern right, or bowhead, and the blue are now so close to extinction that, despite nominal protection, it is doubtful if they will endure. Three species—the fin, minke and sperm—now bear the brunt of our unremitting assault on the whale nation and their numbers are melting away. Only one race, the Pacific grey, which has been protected for more than forty years, seems to be edging away from extinction.
Because of the catastrophic decline in the numbers of great whales, many nations which were once prominent in the “industry” have given it up as being of no further economic interest. However Iceland, Japan and Norway continue pelagic whaling on a major scale.
The official admitted slaughter is bad enough—but does not, by any means, tell the whole story. Some members of the International Whaling Commission (and several whaling countries are not even members) routinely fail to report the “accidental” killing of undersized whales, cows with calves and whales of “protected” species, as well as direct quota violations. Since the IWC does not provide either effective surveillance or meaningful sanctions against offenders, the quotas which it sets have always been, and continue to be, as much honoured in the breach as in the observance. To make matters worse there is a large number of catcher vessels (and even some small catcher factory ships), mostly operated by Japanese and Norwegian nationals under flags of convenience, whaling on the high seas with a total disregard for any regulations or conventions. These “pirate whalers” are known to take whales of any size, sex or species—including all of the nominally protected species—whenever and wherever they can. Sometimes operating with the connivance of maritime states, particularly in South America and southern Africa, they are believed to kill between two and five thousand great whales every year, none of which appear in “official” statistics of the IWC.
As many as fifty thousand of the larger whales still die each year at the hands of men. Yet, although such continuing slaughter may well result in the extermination of several species, no action to significantly reduce the size of the annual kill is being taken by the nations most involved in whaling.
The great whales are not alone in being hustled toward extinction. We are now seriously threatening the survival even of those relatively little baleen whales, the minkes and the brydes (now being actively hunted by catchers from Norway and Japan). To make matters worse, man is making purposeful war on many species of dolphins and porpoises. Thousands of these little toothed whales are taken by the Japanese for commercial purposes, and large numbers still perish “accidentally” in tuna seines.
It is abundantly clear that if we are to save any of the whales, great or small, we must reject the IWC as our instrument for preventing the ultimate commission of a crime against life which is of such magnitude that it has no equal in human history. The IWC has never served the whales... it has only served the whalers.
If the whales are to survive, mankind must declare and enforce a world-wide moratorium on the killing of all and any whales. Such a respite must be of at least ten years’ duration if the terribly depleted stocks of great whales are to have any real chance to recover. During the moratorium there must be a strictly enforced world-wide embargo on trade in all whale products; otherwise, many whaling companies will simply transfer their operations to flags of convenience so that their ships may join the growing fleet of pirate whalers.
It is therefore imperative that the various governments which are in any way involved in whaling, or with the use of whale products, be subjected to a sustained and insistent pressure demanding their participation in a legally binding treaty of international scope.
Foremost among the organizations committed to protecting what remains of the whale nation is the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose members and ships have been actively engaged in combating whaling in the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic and Antarctic oceans for the past twenty-five years. A registered charitable organization, Sea Shepherd’s work is entirely funded by memberships and donations from those who wish to see whales survive. For more information, see www.seashepherd.org or write to:
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
P.O. Box 2616
Friday
Harbour, Washington
98250 USA
If we are to make amends to the whale nation for the despicable savagery with which we have treated its members in the past, we must do so now. In a few more years there will be nothing left that we can do for them... except to write their epitaph.
This chapter was updated by Farley Mowat in 2005.
FARLEY MOWAT WAS BORN IN Belleville, Ontario, in 1921. He began writing upon his return from serving in World War II and has since written 44 books, which have sold nearly 25 mil-lion copies in more than 60 countries. He spent much of his youth in Saskatoon and has lived in Ontario, Cape Breton and Newfoundland, while travelling frequently to Canada’s far north. Throughout, Mowat has remained a determined environmentalist, despairing at the ceaseless work of human cruelty. His ability to capture the tragic comedy of life on earth has made him a national treasure in Canada and a beloved storyteller to readers around the world. He lives in Port Hope, Ontario.
Copyright © 2012 by Farley Mowat Limited
Originally published in 1972
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