Tuesday, June 12, 2007
A whale of a whale
This is cool, or would be if the whale in question hadn't been killed:
A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.
"No other finding has been this precise," said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Calculating a whale's age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It's rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.
The bomb lance fragment, lodged a bone between the whale's neck and shoulder blade, was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time, Bockstoce said.
It was probably shot at the whale from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890. The small metal cylinder was filled with explosives fitted with a time-delay fuse so it would explode seconds after it was shot into the whale. The bomb lance was meant to kill the whale immediately and prevent it from escaping.
The device exploded and probably injured the whale, Bockstoce said.
"It probably hurt the whale, or annoyed him, but it hit him in a non-lethal place," he said. "He couldn't have been that bothered if he lived for another 100 years."
The whale harkens back to far different era. If 130 years old, it would have been born in 1877, the year Rutherford B. Hayes was sworn in as president, when federal Reconstruction troops withdrew from the South and when Thomas Edison unveiled his newest invention, the phonograph.
Who shot this whale from the time of my great-great-grandfather? Alaskan natives, whose rights as aboriginals trump the interest of all of us in protecting the lives of even ancient cetaceans, that's who. Such is the strange calculus of the politically correct.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Jun 13, 12:57:00 AM:
If its white and has a skelleton tied to it its name is MOBY DICK and he is hiding from GREENPEACE. GOT A WHALE OF A TALE TO TELL YOU ALL,A WHALE OF A TALE OR TWO
By 
ICEX_71, at
Wed Jun 13, 07:01:00 AM:
Ok..I realize logic is not in vogue but it's a might leap from identifying a whale by the age of a whaling spear stuck in it.
Say I'm driving around Gettysburg battlefield. Iget a flat tire and the offending delator is a Civil War era nail, possibly fallen from one of the thousands of wagons in the area...does that mean my tire is 144 years old?
By , at
Wed Jun 13, 08:52:00 AM:
Harpoon arrow heads do not magically get themselves embedded in a whale in the manner of a nail in a tire. Talk about logic.
I would also wager that the whale in question is significantly older than ~130 years, based on the discovery of the harpoon arrow head.
The whale was probably nearly full grown at the time of the first attack, which might make it 140 or 150 years old.
There is something more than a little disturbing in killing a 150 year old sentient creature just to satisfy the tribal longings of "native Alaskans".
-David
By GreenmanTim, at
Wed Jun 13, 11:31:00 AM:
So the green guy in the mix steps in to talk about indigenous peoples, whaling and conservation. A messy stew.
I oppose commerical whale harvests by Norway and Japan where whaling is culturally valued. I am unconvinced that they need to continue whaling for cultural, let alone actual survival. Neither culture is placed at risk if they forgo the hunt.
I have a more nuanced approach to the taking of some wildlife to conserve the remainder. I've been involved in community-based conservation projects in Namibia that provided rural livelihood diversification and increased the health and viability of wildlife such as elephant and leopard through a limited number of trophy permits. Some species (elephant in southern Africa) can sustain a modest amount of trophy hunting, especially if the animals are "problem wildlife" in direct competition with farms and property. Others (black rhinos) cannot in good faith be hunted while their numbers are so critically low (although CITES granted 5 annual black rhino permits to Namibia and South Africa: see my post Horns of a Dilemma at Walking the Berkshires for more on this). http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires/2007/06/horns_of_a_dile.html
The whales taken by native Alaskans are part of a cultural tradition and subsistance that goes back for millenia. There are other food choices, but whaling is a key attribute of what sustains their cultural identity. Without an alternative - and it is possible for cultures to evolve and forge new key attributes - they lose cohesion as a group and purpose as members of their culture. This is precisely why the Makah of the Olympic Peninsula resumed whaling after voluntarily giving it up when whale stocks were in grave decline.
The death of anything so vast, majestic and venerable is a big deal. I've seen a baby elephant die and the image is seared into my brain like a great rift in the universal fabric. It is also a part of life. Clearcutting old growth has that impact on me too, although I understand and appreciate the needs of human communites that depend on forestry. Such takings should be motivated first and foremost by the conservation needs of the species or habitats affected. This does not always mean an absolute moratorium, but the lines start to blur when the death of some is justified on poorly defined grounds to conserve the remainder. It is also not necessary that we be so enamored of cultural relativeism that we give every culture a free pass on selfish or destructive behaviors. I believe that there are cultural, economic and ecological reasons that may make a rare or venerable species elligible for taking, but not simply "as of right" without meeting strong criteria for conservation.
Tough place to be when I and many of you would prefer an absolute rather than nuanced stance on this. But then I bet we'd have a different set of justifications raised if I pushed the envelop a bit on what individuals ought to be allowed to do on private property with the resources that occur there. Wolves on the range, anyone?
By , at
Thu Jun 14, 12:58:00 AM:
CAPTIAN THERE BE WHALES HERE and the reason those whale were swimming up the SACRAMENTO RIVER is becuase they were hiding from GREENPEACE becuase GREENPEACE drives them nuts
