Listening To Whales

Coast Mountain Expeditions January 2005
Listening to Whales
What the Orcas Have Taught Us

This autobiography written by whale researcher and Broughton Archipelago resident
Alexandra Morton deserves to be read not just by those interested in whales but by any one taking life and living for granted in the urban areas of the world. While in basic content it deals primarily with whales (orcas) and life (and death) on the remote BC coast, it bears a bigger and more important message, perhaps not directly intended by the author. That message, which clearly dispells long standing misconceptions and myths about the Killer whale with observation and science, is really a powerful metaphor
about human attitudes towards all living things still ’Äúat large’Äù in the wilderness.

British Columbia Killer whales were once shot to death by the Canadian military with high powered machine guns because of their excessive consumption of commercially valuable pacific salmon. In not so distant years, even commercial fisherman have used whales for target practice which comes as no surprise to any Coastal BC resident who knows the mindset of commercial fishermen. Even today fisherman still exist who shoot and kill anything that eats fish including Harbour Seals, Sea lions, Mergansers, Sea Otters, and probably even Orcas if they thought they could get away with it. Orcas do eat a lot of fish! Fortunately for the Orca, humanity’Äôs attitude has changed. We no longer shoot them, preferring instead to ’Äúlove them to death’Äù by crowding around them in boats and kayaks, gawking in awe. Between dwindling fish stocks and over-crowding by humans, to say nothing of an aquatic environment of ever increasing toxicity, the long term survival of the Orca is far from secure.

Alexandra’Äôs book carefully chronicles our hate/love relationship with the Orca and why,
once we began to understand them, we tried to save them from human induced violence, capture, and extinction.

Despite our enlightened attitudes towards Orcas, many wild things continue to live in constant fear of man. An example of unfair persecution of a wild species is the Grizzly Bear. Long thought to be an aggressive predator ready to charge and kill any thing in it’Äôs way, the Grizzly’Äôs reputation is unwarranted. Experts in the field have acknowledged that the vast majority of Grizzly Bear ’Äúcharges’Äù are bluffs intended to scare off trespassers of its territory. In all likelihood, most charging Grizzlies shot in ’Äúself defence’Äù were only mock charges or threats. Unfortunately for the bears, it’Äôs impossible to tell the difference, and a human with a rifle will never wait long enough to find out what the bear really intended.

All this underscores the need for humanity to re-consider its relationship with all wild things, and indeed, all living things. The world is an awesome place, not because of man or man’Äôs technology, but because of the incredible diversity of life, which as it turns out, may be quite rare in the universe.

This quote by Henry Beston pretty well sums it up:’ÄúWe patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.’Äù

Links

Alexandra Morton

Listeninmg To Whales

Coast Mountain Expeditions January 2005

Listening to Whales
What the Orcas Have Taught Us

This autobiography written by whale researcher and Broughton Archipelago resident
Alexandra Morton deserves to be read not just by those interested in whales but by any one taking life and living for granted in the urban areas of the world. While in basic content it deals primarily with whales (orcas) and life (and death) on the remote BC coast, it bears a bigger and more important message, perhaps not directly intended by the author. That message, which clearly dispells long standing misconceptions and myths about the Killer Whale with observation and science, is really a powerful metaphor about human attitudes towards all living things still ’Äúat large’Äù in the wilderness.

British Columbia Killer whales were once shot to death by the Canadian military with high powered machine guns because of their excessive consumption of commercially valuable pacific salmon. In not so distant years, even commercial fisherman have used whales for target practice which comes as no surprise to any Coastal BC resident who knows the mindset of commercial fishermen. Even today fisherman still exist who shoot and kill anything that eats fish including Harbour Seals, Sea lions, Mergansers, Sea Otters, and probably even Orcas if they thought they could get away with it. Orcas do eat a lot of fish! Fortunately for the Orca, humanity’Äôs attitude has changed. We no longer shoot them, preferring instead to ’Äúlove them to death’Äù by crowding around them in boats and kayaks, gawking in awe. Between dwindling fish stocks and over-crowding by humans, to say nothing of an aquatic environment of ever increasing toxicity, the long term survival of the Orca is far from secure.

Alexandra’Äôs book carefully chronicles our hate/love relationship with the Orca and why, once we began to understand them, we tried to save them from human induced violence, capture, and extinction.

Despite our enlightened attitudes towards Orcas, many wild things continue to live in constant fear of man. An example of unfair persecution of a wild species is the Grizzly Bear. Long thought to be an aggressive predator ready to charge and kill any thing in it’Äôs way, the Grizzly’Äôs reputation is unwarranted. Experts in the field have acknowledged that the vast majority of Grizzly Bear ’Äúcharges’Äù are bluffs intended to scare off trespassers of its territory. In all likelihood, most charging Grizzlies shot in ’Äúself defence’Äù were only mock charges or threats. Unfortunately for the bears, it’Äôs impossible to tell the difference, and a human with a rifle will never wait long enough to find out what the bear really intended.

All this underscores the need for humanity to re-consider its relationship with all wild things, and indeed, all living things. The world is an awesome place, not because of man or man’Äôs technology, but because of the incredible diversity of life, which as it turns out, may be quite rare in the universe.

This quote by Henry Beston pretty well sums it up:
’ÄúWe patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.’Äù

Links

Telegraph Cove Whale Museum.
Paul Spong's Orca Lab.
Alexandra Morton's Web Site.

Tsunami: A West Coast Canada Perspective

While grieving people of the Indian Ocean nations face overwhelming loss and struggle to recover, people and nations of the developed world are responding with record amounts of generosity. All of which is appropriate. It is good to know that humanity is capable of rising to the occasion and to see that with inspiration, people are given to sharing and helping without consideration to politics and religion.

We are also reminded that life on earth is not a predictable event. It is a reminder that we share a planet and that we each have blessings and endure challenges. It is a reminder that life is not fair and that we could make the world a more humane place if some of us give more and take less. We should heed this in our whole lives, not just in the immediacy of a disaster made more real by extensive media coverage. We can go forward with knowledge that people in many other parts of the world also struggle with overwhelming challenge that can be alleviated by ongoing generosity from we who have more than we need and from nations with surplus.

We also live in an earthquake zone near a fault lying just off Vancouver Island’Äôs west coast. Tsunami have undoubtedly struck this region with terrible and devastating force. The most recent and only recorded event took place a few days after the New Year in 1700 when a massive earthquake (calculated as similar in size to the recent Indian Ocean quak) sent two devastating waves onto the island. West coast shorelines and many First Nation settlements were affected, especially a village near the present day town of Bamfield in Barkley Sound.

Native stories describing this tsunami combine with archaeological evidence to suggest that at Pachena Bay a large and thriving community was washed away leaving few survivors. Hundreds of people, lodges, totems and canoes were all swept out to sea. In the aftermath there were no aid workers, no outpouring of relief, not even markers commemorating the place. Just the enduring presence of the wind and the relentless, crashing surf’Ķ

There is the equivalent of a man-made, preventable tsunami every week in Africa.