It is sad how limited the choices are. The IWC wants to allow whaling, but hopes to control it to keep the count down. Naturally, the whaling countries such as Japan will take that as a fig leaf for their whale harvesting and try to bend the law and find every loophole to kill more than is allowed. Some idealists, not in a good sense, think this situation is somehow something to be optimistic about. That is a stretch.

Another documentary about whaling  that mostly focuses on Herman Melville’s failed novel Moby Dick and the  ill fated vessel, the “Essex.” There is so much more to Yankee whaling history than these two insignificant footnotes. Way, way too much time and energy is expended on them when there are much more interesting time periods and aspects to the story.  Melville was a shoddy whaler, to boot.

However, the bright side is, maybe it will inspire people to take an interest in all that other rich material available.

I have been writing a bit about “Whale Wars” and the combat of people I respect against Japanese commercial whaling. I note, however,  aboriginal whaling of the endangered bowheads is ongoing. I am not sure it is much better than commercial whaling. In fact, it is just about as bad an idea.

have written about whales dying extensively in my book. I have described it in detail based on first hand accounts. I have even seen a dead whale beached in Wellfleet and learned first hand why whalemen called slain leviathans “stinkers.” But I had never in my adult life watched as a whale was killed. In the final episode of “Whale Wars Season 2,” the slaughter of a fin whale was depicted graphically. The Japanese whaler chased two fin whales closely, got on top of one which couldn’t dive as it couldn’t take the time to get a deep enough breath, and fired a harpoon into it. The whale struggled, desperately, futilely, and then a man with a rifle started shooting it from on deck. It took maybe 25 minutes for the whale to die. The helicopter pilot from the anti-whaling vessel “Steve Irwin” was visibly shaken and said that as he observed it, he felt the concussion of each shot. To watch the cruel scene was to be moved and shaken. I don’t care to ever see such a thing again.

The photo is of a dead humpback that washed up on Wellfleet’s ocean side several years ago. Someone had carved graffiti  into the body already – something in a whale provokes cruelty. Perhaps some people are reminded of how small they are. The person near the whale is the Portuguese navigator who is sometimes featured in this blog. The amazing thing was how the whale had disintegrated into so many pieces in so short a time.  Just as in the WW S2, rendering the 40 ton giant into so much marketable product is a sobering transformation to watch.

I’m in season two of “Whale Wars,” and my beloved if flawed heroes are facing LRADs, hardware, and nets that protect the whalers from their butter bombs. While I oppose whaling and most commercial fishing – sorry, it tends not to be sustainable when it’s not just for a local market – the drama itself is just delicious.

Whatever one’s opinion of whaling, the conflict between idealists  looking to take a stand here and roll back much of what is wrong with the world versus a big monied exploiter is fascinating. And touching.

The IWC is considering lifting the ban on whaling so that it can bring countries like Japan under its direct control. This seems to me a slippery slope that could unravel all the work that has been achieved. It’s legitimizing a basically inhumane and unneeded marine enterprise. Something smells funny about it all – and it’s not the dead whales.

This story depresses me. I don’t know the details, and this is clearly a tragedy. I have been lucky in that I have paddled with and near finback whales, the second biggest animals ever, and they have tended to be very polite to me.

A pod of right whales has been frolicking off the northeast coast lately, according to a news article on Friday.  They are just off Block Island in fact, a small spit of land where I have seen some of the biggest scariest waves in my life – those are the waves where YOU are in the boat and not on land. Indeed, once entering the harbor in a ferry, a massive wave crashed into the side of the ship and the tilt was considerable. People watching on shore had never seen anything like it. I thought it was kind of fun, but the seconds waiting for the ship to right were….interesting. I always liked the Poseidon Adventure as a guilty pleasure….have even seen the model for the ship in the Los Angeles maritime museum. In any case….

In honor of the appearance of these rights, I’ll repost an older blog on the same subject. For all three of you have already read this, please be patient till I come up with some new material….Pictures of this whale watch to come. Here we go….

Nothing makes everyone into a child better than a whale. That was evident on Sunday when I embarked with my wife and friend on a whale-watching voyage out of Provincetown. Of course Provincetown itself was once a minor whaling port, specializing in six-month plum pudding voyages hunting sperm whales in the North Atlantic. Today, we were pursuing whaling’s logical and preferable successor, whale watching.

“P-Town,” as the locals call it, is interesting to say the least. It’s evolved into a raucous tourist town favored by free spirits and eccentrics. Unlike some other whaling ports, such as New Bedford and New London, it never turned to manufacturing to compensate for the loss of whaling. It stuck with fishing and tourism and it’s quite a success.

I had heard that there were pods of North Atlantic right whales in abundance around Provincetown, and I wanted to add that particular view to my collection of whale-sights. I’d seen the minke, the beluga, the blue, the finback, and humpback—it was time for me to acquire a visual snapshot of the right for my private mental collection. Regrettably, although a threat to no one, the right is highly endangered: The old Yankees who hunted them to near oblivion over a century ago proved just how well they could do a job. Their skills built-or destroyed-a thing to last.

It was an ideal day to watch cetaceans. The weather was clear, bright and cool; the water inviting, but the breeze that kept gusting onshore made the notion of kayaking problematic, even in Provincetown’s sheltered harbor. We were fortunate to see a few rights feeding just off the bare golden beach near Race Point. If they were the right whale to kill (slow moving and able to float after being killed) they were the right whale to watch, too, hovering near the surface long so we could get a good view of them.

Further out towards Stellwagen Bank we saw more whales, 25 or so, humpback, feeding, diving, flukes up, gulls everywhere crying and looking to get their scraps. The awe of the whale—the hand of god, as it were—made mouths on board, children and open in wonder.

The sighs of the crowd, the way the passengers and viewers ran one side of the boat to the other to see whales—it made one feel humble and part of a large collaboration. If more people see whales, the less chance they’ll stand by to see them hunted to extinction.

The pot thickens. The Japanese authorities are now presenting anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune with five charges, the worst of which  can put him away for 15 years. I was curious to see how closely the media would follow this. It turns out also, he’s being held in maximum security and kept in his cell 22 hours a day as if he were a common criminal. The man is a political prisoner and Amnesty International should intervene if it hasn’t.

Given Peter Bethune, one of the Sea Shepherds so gloriously depicted in “Whale Wars,” is under arrest by the Japanese coast guard, I wonder if I’ll have to wait see  his fate on Animal Planet. Or, hopefully, the media will give us an update on his legal wrangle. It’s been clear that the violence on the Japanese whalers’ side has been escalating and could possibly get out of control. And, according to the NYT article, “Japanese media reports suggested that Tokyo intends to use Mr. Bethune’s arrest as a warning to Sea Shepherd to end its confrontations on the high seas with Japan’s whaling fleet.”

This is getting interesting, and of course, one hopes the good guys – including both human and cetacean species, wins.