The L.A. Times weighs in on new book on whaling

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From the Los Angeles Times:

 

Sunday, August 5, 2001

 

SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

Leviathans of the Deep

 

By RICHARD ELLIS

 

EYE OF THE WHALE

Epic Passage from Baja to Siberia

By Dick Russell

Maps by Eben Given

Simon & Schuster: 688 pp., $35

 

Just as Herman Melville is the hagiographer of the sperm whale, Charles

Melville Scammon served that function for the gray whale. Although Melville

was only a sometime whaleman (he sailed aboard the New Bedford whaler

Acushnet in 1841 and participated in some actual whaling before jumping ship

in the Marquesas), Scammon, who was born in 1825 in Maine, spent most of his

adult life as a whaling captain.

His " Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America,

Together With an Account of the American Whale-Fishery, " first published in

1874, has long been considered the classic discussion of the gray whale,

even though there have been innumerable technical and semi-technical studies

published since then.

Capt. Scammon, stand aside for Dick Russell.

Once in a while, a book comes along that redefines its subject to the

extent that most previous works immediately become obsolete. " Eye of the

Whale " is such a book. Almost everybody, well, almost everybody in

California, anyway, knows about the gray whales' southward migration from

the Bering and Chukchi seas to the lagoons of Baja, where they mate and

deliver the calves of the year before turning around and swimming back to

Siberian-Alaskan waters. Their 13,000-mile round trip is the longest annual

migration of any mammal.

Lots of Californians and visitors to California have been

whale-watching, either in boats or from shore, watching the leviathans pass

on their timeless journey, and many have even made the trip to Magdalena Bay

or San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja to see the so-called " friendly whales. " But if

you think that watching the whales pass Point Loma or even seeing one up

close from a Zodiac in Magdalena Bay is the sum of the gray whale

experience, think again.

Scammon not only chronicled the history and natural history of the gray

whale, he also participated in the species' downfall. In 1858, as captain of

the whale ship Lenore, he discovered the whales' breeding grounds in Laguna

Ojo de Liebre (now known as Scammon's Lagoon) and essentially led the charge

of the whalers to Baja California to kill as many gray whales as they could

find there. Since the entire population of Pacific gray whales went to Baja

every year, it was not long before the whalers, who simply sailed there and

waited for the whales to show up, had so reduced their numbers that the

population was considered almost extinct.

As any whale watcher can tell you, however, they are most assuredly not

extinct, and some 20,000 of these 40-foot-long, 40-ton creatures swim past

the coasts of Alaska, Vancouver, Washington, Oregon and California every

year before reaching the warm salty waters of Baja California. Russell went

there too, to see the whales and talk to everybody who has ever had anything

to do with the study, rescue or portrayal of Eschrichtius robustus, the

well-known whale with the jaw-breaking scientific name.

He records conversations with scientists Roger Payne, Jim Darling,

Steven Swartz, Marilyn Dahlheim, Peter Tyack, Bob Brownell, David Rugh and

others (the list is much too long to repeat here), but you'll have to take

my word for it; he spoke to everybody who ever thought about or published a

cogent word about the gray whale. He couldn't talk to Scammon, Roy Chapman

Andrews, Ray Gilmore or Carl Hubbs, but he could read what they had written

and used their contributions in assembling what is surely the most

comprehensive book ever written on a single whale species.

We tend to think that California gray whales occur only in the eastern

Pacific, but this is not so. In the recent past, no more than 400 years ago,

there were gray whales in the Atlantic too, but they have now gone the way

of the dodo, eliminated by Basque whalers or climate change or some other

happenstance of the mysterious process we call extinction. The evidence for

their existence is unequivocal: Fossil remains of a species similar to, if

not identical with, the Pacific gray whale have been found in Sweden,

England, the Netherlands and on the East Coast of North America from New

Jersey to South Carolina.

When American scientist Andrews visited the Japanese whaling station in

Ulsan, Korea, in 1912, he found that they were catching a whale they

referred to as Koko-kujira (which can be roughly translated as

" devil-whale " ) and realized that the gray whale, which he believed was

extinct in Alta and Baja California waters, was still in the western

Pacific. These gray whales, believed to have been eliminated more recently

by Japanese, Chinese and Korean whalers, are still there, but in

much-reduced numbers.

So Dick Russell, in the course of writing this astonishingly

comprehensive book, went to see these whales too. He managed to get himself

to such inhospitable and almost unreachable places such as Sakhalin Island

off the frozen coast of Siberia and the Diomede Islands in the middle of the

Bering Strait, and he talked to the Chukchis and the Inuits, for whom gray

whales are a part of history. At Piltun Lagoon, northern Sakhalin, Russell

went out with American marine mammalogist Dave Weller to see the whales. In

the rough waters, a gray whale surfaces:

" Now the whale turns and gazes over at us with that intense, that

immense and impeccable eye. Then it rolls again offering us a dramatic

gesture of pectoral fin and tail fluke, which pounds the water and sends

spray our way. The whale appears to be having a fabulous time, enjoying

being pummeled and moved around by the breakers. Surf-riding no doubt! And

showing off for us. "

The mighty sperm whales, for most people the quintessential whales, are

still poorly known. They were hunted intensively by the Yankee whalers and

later by the Soviets and the Japanese, but they were never pushed near the

precipice of extinction. Gray whales, however, were at one time believed to

be extinct, so their resurrection is both a testimony to their resilience

and an event of uncommon significance.

William Beebe, ornithologist, aquanaut and conservationist, wrote that

" when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more,

another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again. "

The loss of a species, whether fish, sparrow or whale, diminishes all of us

and compels us to reconsider our role in the complex web that entwines all

life on Earth.

Three gray whales were rescued to great fanfare off Point Barrow in

1988. Two whales, Gigi and J.J., were kept in captivity in California and

released successfully back into the wild. In recent years, the Makah Indians

of Cape Flattery, Wash., have petitioned the United States government for

permission to kill a gray whale to revitalize their flagging traditions, and

guess who was there to watch the hunt and talk to the Makah whalers? Right.

There is little about gray whales that Russell doesn't know, and after

reading this book, you will be able to say the same. But why would you want

to read a 688-page book about whales? For starters, you might want to know

about an animal that was considered extinct and is now the subject of a

multi-million-dollar industry. Or that was considered so dangerous by

Scammon and his whaling cronies that it was colloquially known as

" devilfish " ?

But that's not really the point. " Eye of the Whale " is a marvelous

book, filled with insights that go beyond whales and whaling, gracefully

written and utterly enthralling. Even if you've never read " Moby-Dick " or

seen " Pinocchio " or given a passing thought to going whale-watching, you

ought to read Russell's book. It will entertain you, and it will change the

way you think about the natural world.

 

* * *

Richard Ellis is the author of " The Book of Whales, " " Men and Whales "

and the forthcoming " Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the

Sea. "

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times

 

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