Everlasting War

The industry of which those sailers were a part decimated whale populations.  Indeed, much life in the sea was historically overfished, with vast ecological consequences.  It remains to be seen if this long-standing problem is being usurped by pollution, climate change, and acidification.

This fin whale is one of 23 carcasses that have washed up on Alaska beaches in the last month. Before anyone freaks out about Fukushima radiation, it’s worth looking at NOAA’s Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Event (UME) chart, which indicates most UMEs occur not in the Pacific, but in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico – and that of the causes that were determined, they include infections, human interactions, malnutrition and, increasingly, the biotoxins demoic acid and brevetoxin (red tide), which are known to increase with pollution and thrive in warming waters.

Updates on the Alaska UME event can be at NOAA’s website.

Following is the transcript from the 10th Dispatch from the Endocene, the episode for Sunday, August 23.  You can listen to the entire broadcast on Extinction Radio here.  The illustrations are from an exhibit in the Whaling Museum, of embroidery depicting scenes and quotes from “Moby Dick”.

“And still another inquiry remains…whether leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; or whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.”

I have only been to Nantucket once before and loved its historic architecture and cobblestone streets, its lack of even a single traffic light, and the pervasive fresh smell of salt water.  This is probably because I grew up in a house which was built in 1720 in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a sleepy seaside town on the far side of Cape Anne about an hour north of Boston.  In the 1600’s, Ipswich was expected to be what Boston became.  A harbor that silted in left the town in economic decline for the subsequent three centuries, so the impoverished citizens had no money to tear down the houses and replace them with newer fancier versions.

Consequently Ipswich, though small, has more preserved 17th Century homes than any other town in the United States.  I still miss the ancient mystique conveyed by those mute rows of clapboard houses, with their leaded bubbly diamond-paned windows – and the worn graveyard stones spattered with lichens.  The stubborn survival of such artifacts testifies to longevity through adversity, which is a comforting notion.  But back to our day trip.

Herman Melville wrote, in “Moby Dick” – “Nantucket! …It stands there, away off shore…a mere hillock, an elbow of sand…what wonder…that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! …launching a navy of great ships on the sea…and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood…” 

He referred, of course, to the whales that sailers from the island pursued and relentlessly exterminated – at first easily plucked from the adjacent migratory route just off the shores, then from down the Atlantic to South America, around Cape Horn and finally chased all the way up to Japan.  The whalers’ journeys began as day excursions, and then, as the whale populations were wiped out, grew into weeks, and finally searching as much as 3 years long at sea.

Nantucket was the original epicenter of the whaling industry that began in the 1600’s and flourished, with only a setback or two from international wars, into the 1800’s.  It’s difficult to convey just how enormous the slaughter of whales became, and how ruthlessly and swiftly it expanded, and how essential the oil was for lamps, soaps, and lubricants in the burgeoning industrial age.

“Moby Dick”, the novel and the real-life tale upon which it was based, is a chronicle of hubris, slaughter, greed, and obsession.  These themes are explored through desperation, disaster, terror and cannibalism.  It’s also a cautionary tale about the retribution of Mother Nature, which makes it a quintessential story for our own time, when human exploitation and ruination of ecosystems has spread to every habitat on earth – and so many sleeping dragons have been poked and awakened that it’s almost impossible to keep track of the consequences.  We are witnessing rampant deforestation, over hunting and fishing species to extinction, pollution, dwindling freshwater aquifers, depletion of essential mineral and energy resources, the melting glaciers and polar ice, sea level rise, acidifying oceans, transport of invasive species, the burning forests, violent storms, heat waves, and extreme weather bringing floods and droughts.  Did I leave anything out?  How about increased seismic activity from the isostatic rebound of the great ice sheets.  Earthquakes, volcanic explosions, and tsunamis anyone?

With the transcript of this episode on the Extinction Radio website, I will leave links to some previous articles I have written on my blog, Wit’s End, that look in greater detail at the scale of this truly epic annihilation.  The title of the first is taken from the quote that began this Dispatch, “The Final Puff”, which features original paintings from the era, plus a fascinating review by Emily Witt published in the London Review of Books called “Properly Disposed”.  She discusses Eric Carle’s book “Moby-Duck:  The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea” which traces the travels of plastic in a most amusing and enlightening way, slightly more sinister than his famous “Hungry Caterpillar” child’s book.  Another post, “Merely Players” contrasts the profound parallels between Melville’s masterpiece and the brilliant book and movie “Life of Pi”, which also examines the savagery of man against animals, and himself.  There are pictures of items in the museum and buildings and luxury shops in neighborhoods around the town, in “Torches of Freedom”.

“Moby Dick” is Melville’s dramatization of the true story of the shipwreck of the “Essex” – the first whaling ship, but not the last, to be attacked by its prey.  In the fictionalized version, he called the ship the “Pequod”, which also sank after the assault.  As with the “Essex”, most of its crew perished immediately, and the few who remained were condemned to drift on the water, exposed to the elements, starving and dying of thirst.

Until very recently on Nantucket, there was deep shame and general aversion to acknowledging the fate of the crew of the Essex.  The incident was not discussed in polite company, and the inhabitants tried to expunge any association, and distance themselves from the well-known disaster.  Recently however they seem to have decided to embrace it – at least at the Museum, which has installed an extensive exhibit since the last time I toured. It seems to have become a macabre draw, which probably is related to the popularity of zombie movies.

A whimsical and oddly delightful gallery, called “The Mighty Misty Monster”, features the fantastic, minutely precise embroidery of Susan Boardman.  She has illustrated narratives from the book with exquisite raised panels, delicately stitched and embellished with tiny beads and pearls.  I took photos of them, which you can find on my blog for this Dispatch.

It also includes props, such as costumes and weapons, lent by the producers of a movie to be released in January of this year.  It is a dramatization of a book of eponymous title, “In the Heart of the Sea” which is a big Hollywood updated version of the last voyage of the “Essex”.  I can’t wait to see it!

Far from ignoring the sordid details of the Essex survivors, the new exhibit unabashedly expounds on the cannibalism of the crew that remained.

Worse even than that, according to one of the plaques in the exhibit, “Cannibalism among shipwrecked sailors was openly acknowledged in the days of soil, and castaways often admitted to drawing lots to decide who would live and who die.  Yet it is clear that these lotteries were rarely fair, and the strong typically ate the weak.  In disaster after disaster, passengers perished before sailors, boys before men, and blacks before whites.  So, too, perhaps, among the men of the Essex.  Is it a coincidence that only Nantucketers remained in the boats at the end, or that only white men survived, or that only non-Nantucketers elected to remain on Henderson Island?”

So the formidably bleak picture of human nature presented by Captain Ahab turns out to be the perfect fictional representative for what new research now presents as indisputable.

 

In a blow to the fantasies of the WooWoo (which they will probably never admit) this conclusion is being described in newly published research by scientists as, finally, a virtual certainty beyond any doubt:

A headline from the university release says:

This is precisely why the WooWoo dread this final nail in the coffin, one which has been obvious for some time and certainly to anyone who read George Monbiot’s monumental article, “Destroyer of Worlds”.  The correlation of humans driving dozens upon dozens of species to extinction in prehistoric times is as strong as the shape of continents fitting Pangea, or smoking causes cancer, or burning billions of tons of fossil fuels adds to greenhouse gases and warms the earth…or spewing toxins into the air poisons trees.

The WooWoo are loathe to concede that humans caused the extinction of the megafauna because it fundamentally interferes with their cherished belief that humans are capable of, indeed prefer, living sustainably and peacefully within natural constraints.  Their hope for survival – or if not survival, then salvation – resides in the conviction that, absent some evil influence, humans are predisposed to respect and cherish nature without despoiling it.  This runs counter to basic biology.  Their supposition that humans are uniquely special is actually arrogant, and requires the existence of some “outside” force that perverted our spiritual inclination towards perpetual harmony – forces such as patriarchy, organized religion, agriculture, or capitalism that are to blame for wealth inequality, racism, sexism, slavery - as if those are “outside” forces!

An earlier report says much the same thing, but about life in the ocean instead of on land, AND, it’s from 2001.  It was co-authored by several scientists, including Jeremy Jackson, and also my daughter’s thesis advisor, James Estes (which is how I came across it) titled “Cover story in Science reveals historical overkill of marine Megafauna triggered current ocean crises”.

These leading marine biologists called for restoration of the ocean, claiming that the most pernicious problem is overfishing.  Of course, no such restoration has occurred, in fact the opposite has transpired.  Humans have continued extracting life from the sea – and polluting it, and acidifying it – at a horrendously accelerating rate.

This completely ineffectual report, written 15 years ago, makes it quite clear that trends towards ecosystem collapse are impervious to scientific warnings.  Just listen to what they said:

One of the plaques in the Whaling Museum that highlight quotes from contemporaneous writings about the sinking of the “Essex”, described the depravity and insanity among the shipwrecked sailors.  Commodore Charles Ridgely, of the USS Constellation, described their condition on March 9, 1821 – “They were ninety two days in the boat & were in a most wretched state, they were unable to move when found sucking the bones of their dead Mess mates, which they were loth to part with.”

I just have to love that vision of the crazed sailors, quavering in their battered boats and terrified by the prospect of rescue, wondering if they would rather roll on the swales of the ocean, blubbering and clinging and sucking old dry bones, than rejoin the inescapable brutality that is human society.

Good luck with that.