Of Whales

Pre-earthquakes, in the entrance-way of the Canterbury Museum, there was a static display of whalers in rowing boats fighting a Sperm Whale. As Henry remembers it one of the boats was caught in the mouth of the whale. He admired the bravery of the men capturing such a savage beast.

Whaling ceased in New Zealand in 1964, so when Henry was at school, it was a part of the county’s primary industries so was justified as harvesting rather than slaughter.

The first regular visitors to New Zealand other than indigenous peoples, were the whalers and sealers who made fortunes and supplied ‘necessary materials’ to Europe. Folk lore recalls them as tough resourceful men and that’s how Henry was taught to regard them.

Colour movies were uncommon when he was at primary school and his class they was taken to a theater to watch a movie on whaling where the motorised chaser boat had a harpoon with an explosive head. The whales had no chance and Henry no longer saw the whalers as heroes.

There was also a film about Eskimos, more correctly Inuit people, and the narrator said that children regarded seal and whale blubber as sweets. Narrators should be careful what they say!

There was a hawker-fishmonger who came around the street where Henry lived. One day he called out, ‘whale meat suitable for cat food’. Henry persuaded his mother to purchase some.

The opportunity presented itself for him to sample some blubber that remained on the flesh. It was oily and unpleasant, not at all sugary! He spat it out. He then fried three pieces of cubed brown meat.

It was coarse and oily - not at all pleasant!

Henry’s family stayed at Brighton Beach in the summer of 1952 and alone at seven on a warm Northwesterly morning he was body-boarding when a dolphin joined him – just surfing on a wave with him twice. His family did not believe him, but from then on he became interested ocean mammals.

A Sperm Whale washed up on the beach and Henry awed at the dinner-plate sized scars on the carcass. The Press said the scars were caused by some mythical giant squid! He had seen the movie Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea so it all tied in for him.

Confirmation came for him when he saw a magazine picture of a decomposing giant squid, which dwarfed a Landrover.

September 2014 saw Te Papa Museum publicly dissect a Colossal Squid retrieved from the Ross Sea – a very rare thing to happen.

Through the 1800’s and into the 20^th century, whale oil was used for cooking, illumination and lubricating machinery. The bone was the plastic of the time.  Blue and Right whales had baleen, the krill filters in their mouth, used to stiffened corsets, parasols and collars.

Henry had seen corset bones and testing their resilience he tried to pierce one with a hat pin. Unfortunately for him, his mother was wearing the corset and he missed the bone!

Many small ports around New Zealand display the ‘whale pots’ used for rendering the blubber. Henry supposes that seal fat was rendered in much the same way. In colonial times, settlers needed every avenue to earn a living.

Nowadays there is enlightenment and no justification to hunt whales. The light has not shone on Japan, Norway or Iceland – they still have blood on their hands.

Habitat is shrinking for all sea creatures; a paradox if global warming is a fact.

Henry identifies with a shrinking habitat. When he built his house thirty years ago, there were five permanent residences up his road – now there are 35. He is baffled by people who can sign loan documents to ‘own’ $50 000 cars but are unable to comprehend the large 70 on a round red and white disc and match it to their speedo. Their septic tank effluent ends up in the still clear river, but bacteria that otherwise converts faecal matter are killed by toxic cleaners, shower gels and shampoos added to waste water.

Freedom campers climb his fence to empty their bowels in his paddock. Males hose fenceposts or trees while females jettison, leaving dead patches of pasture. Shopping bags of rubbish are left for someone else to dump.

Mothers dispose of their 500 year decomposable baby’s nappies on the roadside or in his pasture.

Single engine trains with ten wagons have been replaced by throbbing multiple engines with up to fifty wagons, ten tonne trucks morphed to forty tonne dreadnoughts with engine brakes that drown out birdsong and Haley Davidsons Stuka up the hill! 

 The fate of habitats depends on mankind’s attitude. Reaping or raping, buying the products or not, reducing waste or not. Extinction occurs due to lack of habitat – there are better legacies.