Leviathan or The Whale

and Norway–two of the so-called ‘big five’ of the whaling nations (the others being Britain, Japan and Russia)–announced their decision to withdraw from the convention ‘because it has proved impossible for the two countries to obtain reasonable whaling quotas’. Even as the western nations squabbled, Japan was increasing its fleet. By 1963, headlines were announcing, ‘TASTE FOR WHALE MEAT BOOSTS INDUSTRY’–a reference to the fact that for the Japanese, whale oil was secondary to its meat–and noting that the nation had recently acquired the
Southern Harvester
, the same ship visited by the Queen’s husband. There was a certain bias to such reports–‘There is a mechanical ruthlessness about Japanese whaling methods which makes the whalers of a few years ago look like amateur adventurers’–which was another legacy of war.
    The same article added that a ‘state of piracy’ was ‘gradually emptying the whaling grounds’. Whaling was a free-for-all, and one of the worst offenders was the Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, future husband of the former First Lady. His vessels were purposely registered in Honduras and Panama, countries beyond the IWC’s membership, and plundered protected waters, taking whatever whales they met, ‘be they endangered species or newborns’. Only when Norway publicized his actions–and after the Peruvian navy and air force had opened fire on his ships for hunting whales within their territorial waters–was Onassis forced to stop his slaughter, finding it more financially viable to sell his fleet to the Japanese.
    All this was accomplished despite–or perhaps because of–quotas imposed by the International Whaling Commission. The Antarctic catch for 1967-8, for example, was set at thirty-two thousand ‘Blue Whale Units’. The world’s largest animal was reduced to a mathematical quantity, and its ancient population as ‘stocks’ in bureaucratic equations. It was a terrible arithmetic:
    1 BLUE WHALE UNIT = 2 FINBACKS,
OR 2 1/2 HUMPBACKS, 6 SEI WHALES.

    Not only was the average size of whales in the catch declining, ‘which points suspiciously to overkilling’, as one scientist noted, but ‘the CDW–take per catcher’s day’s work–which is a measure of the effort required to take a whale, is also steadily declining, which tells us what we already know, that the whales are disappearing’. An awful possibility led another marine biologist to wonder, ‘What will be next? Will the orbiting satellite speak through space to tell the hunter where to find the last whale?’
    The whales could not win. As the rorquals diminished in the Antarctic, the whaling nations turned back to sperm whales. Many thousands were caught by the fleets on their way to the Southern Ocean, in warmer waters where females and breeding stocks were found. During its London meeting in 1965, the IWC discovered ‘massive evidence’ to show that regulations about the size of sperm whales that could be taken were being comprehensively broken. As a result, the commission banned sperm whaling between latitudes of 40° north and south. That year the killing reached its historical crescendo, with the death of 72,471 whales.
    One of the last whaling ports was Dundee, sending ships to waters that, twenty years later, would witness Britain’s last colonial war, and where they now lie as rusting wrecks in the rocky harbours of South Georgia and the Falklands. Some of the men who worked on the ships are still alive, and describe their work in these open-air abattoirs as an inferno. The remembered noise, the smell, the sights repulse their memories, retrospectively. If the whales had been able to scream, they say, no one would have been able to bear their work. Instead, the whales were rendered dumb in the face of destruction, as if they agreed not to protest against their abuse, the more to shame their persecutors.
    I cannot claim immunity. As I walked home from school through wet autumn leaves to find my mother drying clothes by the fire, Southampton factories were processing whale-oil margarine which sat in yellowy blocks in our fridge, while my cheeks were brushed with whale fat, for ‘women will be interested to learn it goes into the making of their cosmetics’, as my encyclopædia informed me.
    The lingering smell of whale.
    While I read illicit American comics under my bedclothes, fantasizing about a world of sleek-suited superheroes, new processes–sulphurization,