Graphic: Andrew Mazariegos/The Olaf Messenger
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) estimates that more than three million whales have died at human hands on purpose. That doesn’t include the thousands of porpoises, dolphins, and pilot whales caught and drowned as bycatch by drift nets every year. Whaling saw its peak in the 1800s, and in 1970, the IWC passed a total ban on whaling in controlled areas and of endangered species. The IWC has tried to ban commercial whaling outright, but have not done so because the cost of a ban in unjustifiable as it’s not a significant part of the GDP of any of the countries still whaling, and hathere is not a quanifiable value placed onthe impact it has on the environment. Norway, Canada, and Japan are modern, first-world countries continung the practice depie that having no food scarcity to justify whaling, nor a need for whales oil. These countries take more than three thousand whales a year, which is unjustifiable in the Anthropocene, now more than ever.
There are some communities, however, that exist outside of modernity. There are 12 villages at the end of the world, the coast of Alaska and Siberia. These communities have no roads, hospitals or grocers, and on average have populations of under 300. The residents are Inupiaq and Siberian Yupik, and they hunt bowhead whales in the spring and fall. They have since the Athabascan people crossed the land bridge in the west and the Thule people migrated from the ice fields in the east, both ancient groups following the whales. On the coast today, the Inupiaq captains across the 12 villages today take about 70 Bowhead whales a year, the only large species allowed. The harvest brings in about 1.2 million pounds of meat, which is distributed freely throughout the communities. The equivalent cost of beef to be imported would cost the subsistence villages 11 to 30 million dollars a year, which is completely unaffordable.
Whaling captains pay thousands of dollars and spend countless hours preparing and executing the hunt, using modern technology so the whales die as painlessly and quickly as possible, but also with ancestral methods of harpooning from scanoes. Captains and their crews haul the whales to shore with ropes and their backs, not cranes or diesel trucks. The entire weeklong hunt is incredibly spiritual and ritualistic, hunters often sing to the whales as they hunt, blessing them for giving their body to feed the village. The first captain to take a Bowhead is obligated to bring it where the people are hungriest. It’s unheard of for a captain to refuse to share what has been given to him, and it is shameful for any part of the whale to go to waste. Captains are to be humble, aware, and thankful for their ability to provide.
So does that give them the right to hunt? I think it does. In my elementary school in Fairbanks, A.K., there was a tapestry of an Inupiaq boy, cut into the cloth with seal fur, being thrown in the air. The boy was launched off a big blanket, which was embroidered with beads. Each side of the blanket was held by a member of the community. The blanket toss as it’s called has been done for thousands of years to celebrate the end of a successful whaling season. It is indigenous culture, and it’s celebrated and revered, as illustrated on the wall of my old school. While it’s incredibly human-centric of me to say that indigenous tradition is more important than the lives of whales, I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the whales and the whalers can exist together, as they have for thousands of years. The harvest is small enough that calving mothers are able to maintain the pod size and population health, and the population is closely monitored by the whalers, under the self-established organization, the Arctic Eskimo Whaling Committee. But is this lifestyle truly sustainable? As the sea ice melts, the copepods that bowheads eat will lose their habitat, and the cold water that bowheads are so well adapted to could soon be warm and acidic. The whales are also surely ingesting more and more microplastics with each growing generation, which could have long-term effects on the consumer’s health. At what point will it be better to leave the whales in the ocean?
Jacob Rozell is from Fairbanks, Alaska. His major is undeclared.
