Whales fall prey to silent killers

Public pressure, international political cooperation and economic factors due to declining whale populations all had a part to play in the measures taken to protect whales. With many species showing signs of recovery this turnaround is being held up as an example of the power of collective action, including by David Attenborough in his new film Ocean. Attenborough says he had at one time thought: “We’ve lost the great whales.” His joy in the film footage when a blue whale surfaces by his boat is electrifying. “We are forging a new relationship with these gentle creatures,” he tells us.

Greys aren’t often the stars of nature documentaries. They aren’t as elegant as the blue and fin, they are smaller and knobblier, grunt rather than sing, don’t have the striking uniform of orcas or leap about photogenically like humpbacks. When not in the lagoons, they are elusive. But they are a whale poster-child for resilience. They’d already recovered from near-extinction once before the floating factory carnage of the 1920s. In the mid-1800s Captain Charles Scammon led a brutal mass slaughter in the same birthing lagoons we visited. The mothers fought back with such ferocity the whalers named them “devil-fish” and for decades they continued to attack boats, until a gentle encounter in 1972 with local fisherman Francisco “Pachico” Mayoral. They approached his boat as they did ours decades later, and allowed themselves to be touched. These responses to human behaviour show “behavioural plasticity”, an ability to adapt, assess new threats and opportunities, and this bodes well for their survival.

But while whaling is highly conspicuous, many threats are not so visible, or televisable. Destruction in the ocean can be as well-hidden as its wonders, such as the never-before seen images of bottom trawling in Ocean. Together with dredging it’s the undersea equivalent of burning rainforests, disturbing the sediment and releasing carbon, and seeing the carnage it’s hard to understand why it’s not a crime.

Even harder to capture on film is how the warming ocean is affecting availability of the grey whale’s preferred food, tiny crustaceans that live in benthic mud at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Recent UMEs, Unexpected Mortality Events or die-offs, where hundreds of malnourished greys have washed up dead, have now been linked to changes in sea ice cover and availability of grey whale prey.

In Washington State, more than halfway up the migration route, I gained my ultimate role model, a pioneering grey named Earhart by researchers. She was first observed in the waters of northern Puget Sound in 1990 and is a founder of a group called the Sounders, who’ve discovered a new food source. They stop off there during the migration to feed on ghost shrimp. Throughout the most recent die-off, more underfed whales were observed joining the Sounders every year.

But there are limits to how Earhart and her species can adapt. The warming of the ocean is inescapable, more so even than the whalers we vilify. The indirect relationship between today’s fossil -fuel- dependent humans and whales seems to me more brutal than in the 1850s. Historic whaling is easily characterised as morally repugnant because it is past, locatable and materially imaginable. Climate change is existential, difficult to locate or grasp, estranging us from anthropocentric violence. There’s also the noise – seismic exploration for fossil fuels, undersea drilling, and the military sonar – which has been associated with mass strandings.

When I think about our interactions in the lagoons, I worry they could contribute to romanticising the current human-whale relationship and masking the violence of the anthropocene.

Grey whales are an indicator species for the health of our coastlines and the deeper ocean. As well as celebrating their beauty, endurance and recovery, we need to look below the surface at what is hidden and recognise the terrible harm being done.

Photograph by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images