1 Whaling On My Mind
The Norwegian whaling industry has increased its quota of Atlantic great whales despite ever more pointed protests by its European neighbors. Oceanariums in southern Asia are paying top dollar for the few living dolphins "harvested" from the Japanese dolphin drive fisheries. Bad news upon bad news. With that prelude, I feel compelled to tell an equally distressing story that almost threads these separate scenes into quasi-coherent narrative.
Twenty years ago, doing research for an Interspecies communication project with beluga whales unfolding in the Canadian High Arctic, I was shocked to learn that the northern Ocean gathers to itself much of the toxic PCBs, pesticides, and flame retardants being spewed into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans from within Europe, North America and especially Russia. In those days I was still naive enough to believe that this huge and remote wilderness must be, and forever remain "unspoiled". After the fall of the Soviet Union, hundreds of military vessels from the Soviet nuclear fleet were systematically scuttled, energy source in situ, in the Barents Sea. Now, 15 years later, radioactivity is being measured in the livers of marine mammals all over the Arctic.
The story of drowning polar bears has entered Western consciousness full blown these past few weeks. Regard it as the latest unavoidable narrative of the post-Katrina world, set in our path to provide fatal imagery and metaphor about global warming. Polar bears are thrust onto the screen to tell you that, now, or soon, or even yesterday, nowhere on Earth is remote enough to keep clean of the global defecator.
What if global warming turns out to be just one tab of the great human imperception. Another tab begins with a story about orcas. The Northern tier of the species has attained a new status. They are the most toxic species on the planet. I am no longer naive enough to be surprised? Our cumulative smokestacks, large and small, have been exhausting material northward for the past century. Once the icecaps start melting, what other possible outcome could there possibly be for a species existing at the top of food chain?
The toxicity of northern whales is a major (if much too inexplicit) talking point within the shouting chambers of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Japan shouts the loudest and with the most bluster, needing to promote the consumption of ever more whale meat for its huge population of seafood eaters in a world with ever-diminishing sea food. hear their shrill cry: we must take more whales! We need more all the time whales! A dirty whale is a clean whale whale, Every whale, so-many-they are-like-cockroaches whales any where we can find them whales! The Norwegians are capitalists with their own oil surpluses and a small stable population. They don't shout, but prefer to disengage from global discourse. Their whaling putsch is represented by genuinely scary-looking lobbyists who exude thuggish traditionalism. They like to think of themselves as on a smooth path to develop product for the Japanese market. Click the link to check out a recent story provided by Reuters describing their growth plan. Or if you don't have time to click, read this recent testimonial in praise of a local industry lobbyist. The boldface is the writer's own.
This experienced diplomat thinks it has been clear since he left the whaling arena in 1993-94 that Norway would eventually win. Since then, Norway as a whaling nation has taken small steps in the right direction.
So stop complaining. I can see that you are impatient. But there is much to be happy about. This was Klepsvik's message to the whalers. Klepsvik was not surprised about the gradual dissipation of resistance in the rest of the world. Everything has developed precisely as the Norwegian government has predicted. Because the reasons against our whaling were never based on fact, Klepsvik knew the feelings against whaling would cool off. .
The biggest change occurred when the Americans placed themselves in the middle of the debate. They had to take their policy to the voters, and also make it jibe with their own whaling in Alaska. Under the table they decided that it was clear that they would not do anything against Norway, even if they in public announced that they did not like what Norway was doing. The threats from Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain did not count, because the USA, at least unofficially, was on Norway’s side.
It was also quite clear that Norway could not be hurt by American sanctions, which was the thing some in our government feared most. A report from the University of Trade showed that American boycotts are not effective in a country were there are ongoing sanctions against 300 different products all the time.
How bad can I make it sound on this second day of the new year? Not too long ago, the Norwegian whaling industry negotiated the sale of many tons of Norwegian minke whale meat to Japan. Before it left port in Oslo, the entire shipment was seized by the Norwegian health department for exceeding Norway's toxicity standards for food export. Bizarrely, it was the Japanese importer who was most outraged by this seizure. Certainly, Japan has its own food standards. But they are sketchily enforced, and largely dependent on what good old boy network happens to be transacting the distribution. Check out our last month's newsletter for more on Japanese environmental and regulatory censorship.
Rumor has it that the meat of those 100 minke whales was incinerated by Norway. And yet today, Norway continues to increase its catch quota. The meat is kept in deep freeze because of the lack of a market. The whalers are optimists, perhaps waiting for the future good news that their lobbyists have finally convinced Norwegian lawmakers to ease up on regulations forbidding the sale of poison meat. Be assured, if that ever happens, off to Japan it will go.
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Meanwhile, the Japanese have stepped up their efforts to target ever more Antarctic whales. Why? Because the deep DEEP south is the last place on Earth where enough toxic-free whales still reside. Otherwise, the whalers are out of business. Over this past month, Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd Society have mounted expeditions to confront Japanese whaling ships on the high seas off the Antarctic coast. Everyone who cares about whales should read about these encounters. The Greenpeace Story is here. The Sea Shepherd story is here.
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| Japanese whaling ship photographed by Sea Shepherd off Antarctica. The word RESEARCH is meant to comply with the IWC's regulation for "scientific Whaling". |
— Jim Nollman for Interspecies
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Over the past two years, Interspecies' ongoing communication research with wild cetaceans has been filmed two different times by National Geographic Television. Without any prior notice to us, the first of these films was aired internationally just last month. Entitled Animals Like Us: Language it is the first of a series of six programs. Other films in the series, now in various stages of production, are entitled: animal emotions, animal business, animal play, animal culture, and The Beast Within Us.
Our film focused on the subject of animal communication, and included research with parrots, elephants, insects, gorillas, and chimps. We were filmed playing improvizational music with orcas off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Interspecies is now negotiating to secure limited rights to provide a DVD excerpt of this film for our members. If we hear news of another showing on cable, we'll mention it in this newsletter.
The most interesting news this month from the world of animal communication arrives from the waters off Scotland. New scientific research has pinpointed some of the techniques that bottlenose dolphins use to speedily relay complex messages between many members of their own pod in a bid to find food or avoid predators - often across many miles of water. The best mainstream account appears in the newspaper, Scotland on Sunday. Leader of the research team, David Lusseau, is clearly producing some of the best research in the social life of dolphins. Another one of his studies was picked up by the Discovery Channel under the intriguing title Dolphins as Networkers.
