The concern throughout the world in
1968 for those three whales that were locked in the Arctic ice was dramatic
proof that whales, several species of which face extinction, have become
subjects of considerable sympathy.
These are the recorded voices
of whales. These monstrous creatures have been trumpeting their songs, one to
another, in the world’s oceans since the dawn of time, while overhead, great
empires and civilizations have come and gone. Now, their time of decline has
come. It began a long time ago.
Four-thousand-year-old rock
carvings show that the people who lived in what is now Norway were probably the
first to seek out and kill whales in the sea, By around 890 AD, 3,000 years
later, the practice had spread to the Basque people of France and Spain, who
hunted whales from boats in the Bay of Biscay. In the centuries that followed,
Whaling became an important industry in Denmark, England, Germany, the
Netherlands, and, finally, in what would become America.
Whaling
went into dramatic decline, beginning around 1900. Today, whales are hunted
commercially only by Norway, Iceland and Japan. The world’s fascination with
them, however, is at an all-time high, because so few of them are left, given
their tragic history.
Richard Ellis writes about whales, takes
pictures of whales in the open sea, and sketches whales stranded on the beach.
He says it’s a 20-year obsession that began in the mid-1960s, when he designed a
model of a great blue for the Museum of Natural History in New York. "As I began
to do the research, I realized that nobody knew anything about whales. And I
couldn’t really find any pictures of what they looked like: all I could find was
pictures of dead whales. And I became very excited at the prospect of doing what
seemed to be original research on something that was so peculiar, which was the
largest animal that has ever lived on earth."
So large, he
discovered that the largest dinosaur weighed only half as much as the female
blue whale. As he continued his research, he boarded scientific vessels, dove
with whales in the Pacific, and even watched whales die at the hands of modem
explosive-tipped harpoons. His sketches appeared in magazines and encyclopedias
and at the center of what was then the beginning of a movement to save the
whales.
"I was one of those people who used to stand on street
comers and ask for people to sign petitions, which at that time were directed
towards the Japanese and the Soviets. Because in that period of time, late 60s
and early 70s, the Japanese and the Soviets were killing tens of thousands of
sperm, particularly in the North Pacific. And we thought that getting the
world’s opinion on paper would make them say, ’Oh look, all these people don’t
like what we are doing. We will stop.’ Well, of course, they didn’t
stop."
Not at first, commercial whaling peaked in the mid-1960s,
with more than 60,000 whales killed each year. The International Whaling
Commission, a group of member nations aimed at regulating the industry, began to
make recommendations to end commercial whaling entirely. Why kill whales for
soap, or fuel or paints and varnishes, even margarine, ff we had substitutes for
all those products The seemingly senseless slaughter focused the world’s
attention on the whale and consequently the International Whaling Commission or
IWC.
"And since it’s said nowhere in the constitution of the IWC
that you had to he whaling nation to join, you have countries like Kenya and the
Seychelles. Switzerland is a member of the IWC, a country not known for its
whaling history. Countries joined because they felt that this was something that
needed to be done."
By 1986, the Commission had passed a
moratorium on commercial whaling. But since the organization had no enforcement
powers, it could and can not impose sanctions on violators. Only a few nations,
Japan, Iceland, and Norway, continue to hunt whales commercially.
Richard Ellis says there is something magical about this animal caught in
the net of life and time, and we must continue to fight to preserve it, because
in the end we are really protecting a small part of ourselves and our
earth. |
