|
town councils to write to sister cities in Japan to tell them how much the whales mean to them. The Japanese whaling fleet could end up killing a town's adopted whale once the humpbacks leave Hervey Bay on the annual migration to their Antarctic feeding grounds.
Wally Franklin claims that most Japanese people don't know about the Japanese government's whale-killing program and wouldn't condone it if they did. As for the issue of cultural whaling, while Japan did have a traditional coastal whale hunt at one time, the modern Japanese whaling fleet is fully industrialized. "The Japanese never did pelagic or deep ocean whaling before World War II," he said.
But in Japan, as in the rest of the world, the culture is changing. Most Japanese don't eat much whale meat any more, and whale watching has become quite popular. Japan makes more money from whale watching tours than it does from selling whale meat. Some former whale hunters have already transitioned to work as whale watching guides.
According to the Franklins, the real reason why Japan is being so "provocative" about its whaling program has much more to do with larger fisheries issues than with a cultural desire for whale meat. The Japanese government is worried that if they concede on the issue of whales, tuna could be next. The tuna fishery worldwide is in collapse. Tuna stocks have declined by 90 percent over the last 100 years. Out of those remaining stocks, Japan takes about 30 percent of the annual catch. The Japanese have a huge need for marine life because it is part of their staple diet. As fisheries continue to decline, Japan is in a precarious position.
Wally Franklin said, "Japan has brought its fisheries problem to the table of the International Whaling Commission. They have abused the process. The real issue for Japan is fisheries, and whales are just a red herring - excuse the pun. The Japanese see an advantage in keeping whaling under discussion."
Love for whales may take different forms in different cultures. An Eskimo hunter may pray to the spirit of the whale he kills to feed his family. An American child may pray that a lost mother humpback and her calf make their way safely out of the Sacramento River and back to the ocean. A town in Australia may pray that the Japanese whaling fleet does not take the community's adopted icon.
But what the Japanese government is doing - using whales as a pawn in an international resource dispute, seems to have no connection with either love or culture.
The Franklins have found that their campaign to save whales is growing wildly and organically. Trish described a recent slide show presentation to kindergartners. "The teachers quieted the children and told them, 'now don't you speak unless it is to ask a question.' But as soon as it got dark, they started talking, saying things like: 'I've been a whale.' 'I've been swimming with whales.' And they kept talking about their imaginative experiences, either in dreams or just their imagination of what they knew about whales and dolphins. We hardly got to make our presentation, they had so many stories."
Trish Franklin has more than 35,000 photographs of whales and hundreds of hours of video. Because "so many children have never seen a whale," the Franklins are involved in a new project that will make these archives available to the public. Their son Mark, who is a sound and video engineer, is editing the video into short clips. The project is called iWhales.
My favorite clip is called "The Girl and the Whale." It is a lovely meditation on interspecies communication. The reason I love whales and want to see them protected is because they themselves have language and culture. They are fellow sentient beings, and the planet would be lonelier without them.
|
|
