Whale Quotes

“In 1970 Capitol Records and National Geographic released Songs of the Humpback Whale. Payne’s recordings became a smash hit, fascinating listeners around the globe; humpbacks soon became known as ‘opera stars of the deep’. Thirty years later, as I listened to the songs on a reissued CD , the hair stood up on my neck. With the eerie attraction of wolf calls, the recordings have lost none of their haunting novelty. At the same time, the high-pitched squeals and moans evoked a vulnerability surprising in so large a creature. One Australian whaler declared that, had he heard those songs, he never would have ‘fired a shot at a whale’. The historian Barthelmess, on the other hand, recalled that he and the crew listened to Payne’s recordings on the bridge of an Icelandic whaler while they were steaming out to the whaling grounds. ‘It’s a matter’, he insisted, ‘of culturization’.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“The rhythms of humpbacks are similar to those of human music. Their songs last longer than our ballads but are shorter than most symphonies. Do they have an attention span like our own? Do they use similar techniques, repeating refrains that form rhymes, to remember songs? Payne and colleagues suggest that this is so. Our evolutionary path has been separated from whales for 60 million years. Perhaps we are latecomers to music, not the inventors of song.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“Farley Mowat recorded the words of a Newfoundland fisherman, Arthur Pink: They was t’ousands of the big whales on the coast them times. So long as they was on the fishing grounds along of we, I never was afeared of anything; no, nor never felt lonely neither. But after times, when the whales was all done to death, I’d be on the Penguin grounds with nothing livin’ to be seen and I’d get a feeling in me belly, like the world was empty. Yiss, me son, I missed them whales when they was gone. ’Tis strange. Some folks says as whales is only fish. No, bye! They’s too smart for fish.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“In 1960 an independent committee of scientists was appointed to investigate whale stocks. The Committee of Three, Douglas Chapman of the US , K. Radway Allen of New Zealand and the British biologist Sidney Holt representing the UN , analysed whale populations in the Southern Hemisphere, and their findings were tragic. There were fewer than 1,000 blue whales left in the world. Humpback populations were so low that scientists suggested that it would probably take 80 years of protection to restore their numbers. Yet the killing continued: in the whaling season of 1960–61, two Soviet factory ships removed almost 13,000 humpbacks from the waters south of Australia and New Zealand. Two-hundred-and-fifty blues were killed during the whaling season of 1962–3.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“For most of the twentieth century, scientists were allied with whalers; much of their research was done either on the flensing deck or on the occasional stranded whale. Taxes levied on whale oil from the lucrative British Antarctic Territory financed extensive research in the Southern Ocean, including the natural history voyages of the RRS Discovery, the explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s Antarctic vessel. Until the 1970s the expressed intent of this research was to gather biological knowledge to help the hunt. In some cases, the studies were intended to increase efficiency.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“The inability of the IWC to enforce its own regulations was perhaps most blatantly exposed by the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis. He fitted out a whaling fleet trained by Norwegians with a German crew, which operated under several flags, including Panama’s. Although the Central American nation was an IWC member, it was incapable of exerting control over the shipping magnate. According to Ellis, Onassis’s Olympic Challenger ‘took endangered blue whales, female humpbacks and calves, and sperm whales so small that they had not developed teeth’. In a sense, Onassis’s flagrant violations helped the conservationist cause. Here was a fantastically wealthy man bent on the destruction of whales for no apparent reason – he hardly needed the money. Onassis did not bow to international pressure, and he would not abide by treaties. For the IWC , and for whalers who claimed that their industry was strictly controlled and essential to the growing human population, he was a public-relations nightmare. Onassis seemed to relish the role of international renegade: he invited American businessmen and socialites to watch whaling aboard the Challenger. The bar stools on his yacht were covered with the skin of sperm-whale penises, and whale teeth were used as footrests.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“عبَّر صيادو الحيتان عن ندمهم على أفعالهم، وقال مدفعي اسكتلندي -يدعي أنه قتل 2000 حوت- لموات: "نحن لم نرغب أبداً في أن نعرف الكثير عنها، فقد كان الأمر جريمة قتل كما هو. أعتقد أني لو امتلكت هبة البصيرة التي يتمتع بها السلت واستطعت النظر إلى عقول هذه الوحوش، لكان عليَّ التخلي عن البحر والعودة إلى الشاطئ للأبد. هناك أوقات يمكن فيها للمعرفة الكثيرة أن تقف عقبة في طريق المرء."

وصف عالم الحيوان البريطاني ف.د. أوماني موت حوت تم اصطياده بالحرب من قارب الالتقاط من على بعد 500 متر، ومن ظهر مركب يرتفع بضعة أمتار عن سطح البحر، والصيادون على مسافة من طريدتهم: "لو كان باستطاعة الحيتان إطلاق الصرخات التي تدمي القلب، فسيكون الموت أقل هولاً من هذه المعركة الخاسرة، التي كان حوتنا متورطاً فيها الآن في صمت لا يقطعه إلا صرخات طيور البحر البعيدة. لم يكن باستطاعتنا حتى أن نسمع قعقعة الزبَد القرمزي بينما الحوت يتلوى ويغطس، وهو يزفر رذاذاً دموياً في البداية، ثم يفور منه الدم وتتبعه فقاعات في منتصف جزيرة من الدماء تكبر باستمرار. وينتهي النزاع، ويهدأ الزبد الأحمر، وأصبح بإمكاننا رؤية جسده يتمدد ساكناً تماماً. وشغلت الطيور أنفسها بصرخات حادة فوق الجثة وحولها".”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“كانت الحروب البشرية عبارة عن فترات راحة تُرحب بها الحيتان.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“The very breath of a whale could put it in the way of a harpoon.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“When threatened, sperm whales often gather in a circle, thrashing their flukes on the outer edge of the ring. This defence, which one Japanese researcher described as a marguerite flower or daisy, might work against orcas, but modern whalers intentionally harpooned the largest whale in a group, hoping to prompt the formation of a marguerite. The hunters then plucked the whales from the sea, petal by petal.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“In the Caribbean, humpback cow-calf pairs were the prey of choice for traditional and modern whalers. In the search for right whales, the whale biologist E. A. Wilson noted in 1907: ‘the hunt began with the destruction of the calf, because it was known that the mother would then become easy prey, as she would not leave the bay without her suckling’. This type of whaling was perhaps ‘the most complete and rapid method of exterminating an animal that has ever been adopted’.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“والحيتان الصغيرة كثيرة الفضول أيضا، وليس أمرا مستغربا لحوت يافع أن يقترب من سفينة الأبحاث وينظر إلى ملاحيها، قبل أن تستدعيه الأم ليرجع.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“The economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill reluctantly acknowledged that whales could be considered mammals from a zoological perspective, but he insisted that they were fish for commercial purposes.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“After his ship had struck a right whale, Enoch Cloud wrote: she quickly ‘slued’ around, raised her enormous head out of the water, fixed her eyes on the boat, and then bellowing commenced, slowly, ‘sterning off!’ It was the most terrible sight I ever witnessed . . . It is painful to witness the death of the smallest of God’s created beings, much more one in which life is so vigorously maintained as the Whale! And when I saw this, the largest and most terrible of all created animals bleeding, quivering, dying a victim to the cunning of man, my feelings were indeed peculiar!

Whalers may not have expressed much sympathy with their quarry, but the death of a mother with calf could break even the toughest façade: ‘That’s when you feel it’, said one whaler, ‘when we killed the mother the milk made the ocean white all around us’.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“The greenhands, by necessity, were taught the ropes at sea. The captain distributed them among the boats, so as not to slow its progress when they inevitably caught a crab with their oars, breaking the rhythm of the boat. From the stern, the mate called out ‘Break your backs!’ as each took an oar. It was best to be quick, for the ‘iron-fisted and iron-hearted officers’ often ‘beat their information in with anything that came to hand’.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“So what drew them to whaling? Some might have been lured by what Baudelaire called the ‘profound and mysterious charm that arises from looking at a ship’; others, as Elizabeth Hardwick noted in her biography of Melville, ‘have come sulking away, address unknown, from howling creditors, accusing wives, alert policemen, beggary on shore’. Many greenhands were from farming families, some awaiting their inheritance, others, as younger sons, unlikely to come into anything. Runaway slaves were not uncommon aboard Yankee whalers: Nantucket’s Quaker population helped to secure berths for those in danger of being recaptured by bounty hunters.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“According to Herman Melville, the quest for oil and bone resulted in open battle. Nantucket whalers ‘in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous!’.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“The sandy, almost barren island provided little sustenance, and, although the islanders were mostly Quakers, professing a pure doctrine of non-violence, they were quick studies, soon embracing killing of whales. To Melville, these Nantucketers were ‘Quakers with a vengeance’.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“في عام 1590 ذكر جوزيف داكوستا أن السكان الأصليين لفلوريدا كانوا يقفزون على ظهور الحيتان ويسدون فتحاتها التنفسية بالأوتاد كي تختنق.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“وبعد أن يتم تجهيز الحربون، يقوم الصيادون بإصابة الحيتان قرب أعضائها التناسلية، لأنها تؤلم كثيرا.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“وفي أوروبا الشمالية، لم يكن اختيار لحم الحوت مقصوراً على الحيتان الجانحة، فحيتان المينك التي يصل طولها إلى 9 أمتار تُصطاد هناك منذ القديم بسبب زياراتها إلى الخلجان والشواطئ، حيث كان القرويون يقومون بنصب أفخاخ لحيتان المينك باستخدام شباك صيد الأسماك التي كانوا يعلقونها عبر المضايق البحرية في النرويج، ثم يطلقون عليها السهام المتصلة بعوامات خشبية، وكان رأس "الدودسبيلير" -أو ما يعرف بسهم الموت- مغطى بمصل يُفضل أخذه من لحم حوت ميت محروق أو بعض أنواع اللحوم الأخرى المتعفنة، مما يسبب تعفن الدم في الحوت الصغير. وخلال 36 ساعة ستكون البكتيريا قد أضعفت الحوت بما يكفي لقتله بسهولة باستخدام الحربون، ويبقى لحم الحوت قابلاً للأكل باستثناء المناطق المحيطة بالجروح.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“إن الانتقال من الاستخدام لغرض البقاء على الحياة إلى الاستخدام التجاري للحيتان، كان يعني أن الصيادين والمستهلكين كانوا غالبا على غير صلة بالأنظمة البيئية لمناطق صيد الحيتان. وعلى عكس شعب الإنويت الذي كان لديه طقوس محكمة واعتماد كبير على بقاء الأنواع، فإن رغبة صيادي الحيتان بالربح لم يكن لديها مثل هذا الدافع. وقدَّر المؤرخ الإسباني أليكس أغويلر أن شعب الباسك اصطاد حوالي 40000 من الحيتان الصائبة من المحيط الأطلسي بين عامي 1530 و1610، وبحسب مؤرخ صيد الحيتان ريتشارد إيللز فإن شعب الباسك كان طليعة ما سيصبح في النهاية حربا معلنة على الحيتان.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“ويتطلب السم ثلاثة أيام ليقتل الحوت، وينتظر الصيادون انجراف جثته نحو الشاطئ وهم يأملون أنهم لن يخسروا طريدتهم للبحر، أو الأسوأ من ذلك؛ أن يخسروها لجيرانهم.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“يصبح المجتمع غنيًا فجأة بعد قتل الحوت.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“Although the Old Bering Sea cultures generally did not bother with burials, Thule whalers were interred in whalebone graves: whale mandibles and scapulae were used to frame the corpse, perhaps to protect the whaler on his journey after death, a funereal swallow motif.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“Yet if a young bowhead made it to adulthood, it could easily outlive the whaler who had tried to kill it as a calf – and then bury his son and his grandson as well.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“A whale, disoriented, sick or wounded, perhaps just old, can find itself in shallow waters. Its first understanding of the burden of gravity ashore is also its last.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“ومع ذلك فإن استطاع حوت شاب الوصول إلى مرحلة البلوغ، فيمكنه ببساطة أن يعيش أكثر من الصياد الذي حاول قتله وهو شاب، ثم سيدفن ابنه وحفيده كذلك.”
― Joe Roman, Whale

“يمكن أن يجد حوتٌ ما نفسَه في المياه الضحلة، إما بسبب أنه تائه أو مريض أو جريح أو ربما لأنه عجوز فقط، إذ تكون معرفته بمفهوم الجذب نحو الشاطئ هي الأخيرة أيضا.”
― Joe Roman, Whale