Whales Vs Whalers

"Marine scientist Michael J. Moore says we are all whalers, but we don't have to be. Eating fish leads to North Atlantic right whales' entanglement and death. Buying goods made around the world requires global shipping routes, which do not accurately consider right whale breeding and feeding sites, leading to collision. To explain this, Moore conveys to readers scenes from over thirty years' worth of fieldwork, performing whale necropsies for animals stranded on beaches, working as an independent researcher alongside whalers using explosive harpoons, and tracking injured pregnant whales to deliver antibiotics. Despite these sometimes disturbing experiences, Moore has written a hopeful book. He uses these stories to show we can change and to tell us how; the technology for rope-less fishing and tracking whale migrations already exist to protect both right whales and the people who depend on shipping and fishing for their livelihoods"--

Relating his experiences caring for endangered whales, a veterinarian and marine scientist shows we can all share in the salvation of these imperiled animals. The image most of us have of whalers includes harpoons and intentional trauma. Yet eating commercially caught seafood leads to whales’ entanglement and slow death in rope and nets, and the global shipping routes that bring us readily available goods often lead to death by collision. We—all of us—are whalers, marine scientist and veterinarian Michael J. Moore contends. But we do not have to be. Drawing on over forty years of fieldwork with humpback, pilot, fin, and, in particular, North Atlantic right whales—a species whose population has declined more than 20 percent since 2017—Moore takes us with him as he performs whale necropsies on animals stranded on beaches, in his independent research alongside whalers using explosive harpoons, and as he tracks injured whales to deliver sedatives. The whales’ plight is a complex, confounding, and disturbing one. We learn of existing but poorly enforced conservation laws and of perennial (and often failed) efforts to balance the push for fisheries profit versus the protection of endangered species caught by accident. But despite these challenges, Moore’s tale is an optimistic one. He shows us how technologies for ropeless fishing and the acoustic tracking of whale migrations make a dramatic difference. And he looks ahead with hope as our growing understanding of these extraordinary creatures fuels an ever-stronger drive for change. For more information on Moore’s book and research, please visit his webpage at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

At a time when global change has eradicated thousands of unique cultures, The Last Whalers tells the inside story of the Lamalerans, an ancient tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who live on a remote Indonesian volcanic island. They have survived for centuries by taking whales with bamboo harpoons, but now are being pushed toward collapse by the encroachment of the modern world. Journalist Doug Bock Clark, who lived with the Lamalerans across three years, weaves together their stories. Clark details how the fragile dreams of one of the world's dwindling indigenous peoples are colliding with the upheavals of our rapidly transforming world, and delivers a group of unforgettable families.

In the early 1600s, an Inuit boy named Tuk witnesses the arrival of a whaling ship from Europe, and he describes the differences in the way of life between his tribe and the European explorers as they both hunt for whales.

More than any other locale, the Pacific Ocean has been the meeting place between humans and whales. From Indigenous Pacific peoples who built lives and cosmologies around whales, to Euro-American whalers who descended upon the Pacific during the nineteenth century, and to the new forms of human-cetacean partnerships that have emerged from the late twentieth century, the relationship between these two species has been central to the ocean’s history. Across Species and Cultures: Whales, Humans, and Pacific Worlds offers for the first time a critical, wide-ranging geographical and temporal look at the varieties of whale histories in the Pacific. The essay contributors, hailing from around the Pacific, present a wealth of fascinating stories while breaking new methodological ground in environmental history, women’s history, animal studies, and Indigenous ontologies. In the process they reveal previously hidden aspects of the story of Pacific whaling, including the contributions of Indigenous people to capitalist whaling, the industry’s exceptionally far-reaching spread, and its overlooked second life as a global, industrial slaughter in the twentieth century. While pointing to striking continuities in whaling histories around the Pacific, Across Species and Cultures also reveals deep tensions: between environmentalists and Indigenous peoples, between ideas and realities, and between the North and South Pacific. The book delves in unprecedented ways into the lives and histories of whales themselves. Despite the worst ravages of commercial and industrial whaling, whales survived two centuries of mass killing in the Pacific. Their perseverance continues to nourish many human communities around and in the Pacific Ocean where they are hunted as commodities, regarded as signs of wealth and power, act as providers and protectors, but are also ancestors, providing a bridge between human and nonhuman worlds.

Moby Dick és la novel·la més important de Melville. Explica l'obsessió d'un home, el capità Ahab, per matar Moby Dick, una balena en la qual veu l'encarnació del Mal. Ahab actua mogut per l'odi a l'animal que, una vegada, li va arrencar una cama. Però, per sobre del ressentiment, predomina la seva convicció que Moby Dick és un ésser malèfic que el destí ha decidit posar davant d'ell perquè el mati o perquè mori en l'intent.