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NATURE
Take that, Ahab

GREG GATENBY

December 29, 2007
THE WHALE WARRIORS
The Battle at the Bottom of the World To Save the Planet's Largest Mammals
By Peter Heller
Free Press, 304 pages, $29.99

The tale begins in December, 2005, in Melbourne, Australia, where, in strong contrast to the Australian government's blind eye to Japanese whaling transgressions (funny how trade always clouds ethical vision), stevedores, local construction crews and other Aussies help provision the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ship Farley Mowat, and prepare it for the long and bumpy battle ahead (30-feet seas seem to have been the norm).
As Sea Shepherd head Paul Watson sets sail to find the whalers - who, of course, have used every naval trick to remain invisible - National Geographic contributing writer Peter Heller tells us in engaging prose about the quirky crew, the aches of the vessel, the history of whaling, the history of anti-whalers and the cat-and-mouse game played over tens of thousands of square kilometres of ocean.
Paul Watson is the most dangerous man in the world - if you are a whaler. While most other environmentalists see themselves as educators, Watson has for the past three decades made direct action his life's work. "Direct action" here means more than handing out leaflets and unveiling banners exhorting whaling-pirates to stop being naughty. It has meant ramming pirate Portuguese whalers in 1979, sinking pirate Spanish whalers in 1980, landing on the shores of the Soviet Union in 1981 to document for the first time the many illegal activities of Russian whalers, the 1986 scuttling of two Icelandic whalers and the smashing of the whale-meat processing plant, the 1992 sinking of Norwegian pirate-whalers, and throughout the 1990s the harassment of the Faeroe Islands' annual slaughter of scores of pilot whales.
While this direct action has been labelled eco-terrorism by the respective governments acting on behalf of the pirates, the fact remains that Watson has never been convicted of - indeed, has rarely been charged with - any offence related to this direct action. He has also been remarkably successful (and lucky) in ensuring that no people were injured during any of these campaigns. By and large, the governments concerned make a great hue and cry about the crazy Canadian and his messianic message, and then, when confronted with the grotesque evidence of what their pirate-citizens have been up to, drop their condemnation of Sea Shepherd and sometimes even behave properly, as South Africa did by proceeding to put its whalers out of business, sometimes by sinking the whaling ships themselves.
It was not until 2002, however, that Sea Shepherd had the financial resources to tackle the greatest maritime outlaw of all: Japan. From an ecological point of view, Japan's abuse of fish stocks is at least as damaging as its whaling. Bottom-trawling, at which the Japanese are the masters, now destroys an area twice the size of the continental United States every year. And a more recent invention, long-line fishing, is just as invidious. Long lines can stretch to 100 miles each, and kill everything from dolphins, sharks and seals to sea turtles and albatross. All of these large animals are called "by-catch" and are tossed dead (or frequently half-dead) back into the sea as waste. That is, when the fishers retain control of the line. Too often, the line breaks free from its mooring and drifts - and goes on killing until every hook, of which there are thousands, is heavy with the weight of by-catch. One estimate puts the by-catch at a staggering seven million tons per year.
But it is whaling for which Japan remains most notorious. Despite its claims that whale meat is vital to the Japanese diet, less than 1 per cent of Japanese eat whale meat, and only 11 per cent even support whaling for cultural reasons. The cultural reasons don't have much depth, either, since the Japanese only began to regularly consume whale meat after the Second World War, when traditional sources of protein were in short supply.
Just as the Canadian federal government continues to support sealing despite all evidence that the practice is a drain on the budget - to say nothing of the damage it does to our reputation internationally - so the Japanese government continues to support whaling. It does this primarily through a body called the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), and it is this organization that issues the fatuous press releases stating that all whaling by Japanese these days is strictly for research. Just how many more whales have to die before the research is done is never, alas, specified.
It would be ludicrous enough if the Japanese confined their "research" to whales that are not on the endangered list, but unannounced inspections of the main Tokyo fish market have always found meat for sale from all of the endangered species, including from the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet, and now one of the rarest, thanks to the whalers. Most experts place the worldwide population of blue whales at fewer than 2,000, and falling.
Such is the Japanese commitment to the "research" of whales in this century that they have, without apology, begun to vigorously slaughter the mammals in the Antarctic Ocean, where, by international agreement, whales were to be protected. Showing complete contempt for international law, the Japanese invaded the polar reserve and began killing every whale they could catch - but, of course, it was strictly for research. Indeed, so Kafkaesque was the attack, they stencilled the English word "research" in huge letters onto the sides of their whaling ships.
Today, only the willfully blind remain deceived as to the commercial purpose of the enterprise. Not a single paper worthy of academic scrutiny has been published as a result of all this "research." And as late as 2004, the ICR required subsidy of more than $70-million from the Japanese government because whaling business costs are so high, and the resource increasingly limited.
It is on this relatively new battleground that Paul Watson has taken his fight. With his latest ship, the Farley Mowat, he and his crew of 44 international sailors ventured for two months into one of the world's most dangerous seas, made even more perilous by the distance of available help should any trouble arise. Watson was lucky to be accompanied on board by an American author, National Geographic's Peter Heller, who, in a gripping account, details Watson's hunt for the whaling fleet.
A well-told subplot involves Watson's struggle to work with Greenpeace, which also has a ship trying to find and harass the Antarctic whalers. Watson was a co-founder of Greenpeace and, with the late Robert Hunter, was part of the duo in the most famous eco-photograph to date: a snapshot showing the two men in a Zodiac racing before a Russian whaler while a harpoon flies mere centimetres over their heads. But Watson wanted more direct action than Greenpeace could stomach, and since then they have had a rocky relationship.
Heller is especially good at conveying conditions during rough seas. I found myself holding onto the desk as he recounted 40-degree rolls when almost everyone aboard feared the ship would keep rolling onto its side with the loss of all hands. His real strength, though, is writing about the eventual encounter with the whalers. The first sighting on radar, the attempts to catch the zigzagging factory ship, the preparations to ram, the adrenalin pumping in the Mowat crew, a third of whom had never been to sea before, and then the nearing and the nearing and the nearing of the ships until BANG! - and then BANG! again, the account of just these few minutes slowed beautifully for the reader, as time slows for us when we have our own accidents.
Throughout his book, and especially in the last chapter, Heller questions the morality of the tactics used by Watson, and even, albeit politely, questions his sanity. In other words, while no fan of whaling, Heller remains objective about his subject, and it is that relative aloofness that gives this account its authority. I have hundreds of whale books in my library, but this title easily earns a place among the top 10.
Greg Gatenby is the author of two books about whales, Whale Sound and Whales: A Celebration.