Whales and Wiener Dogs

The 14th annual Moby Dick Marathon - a 25 hour non-stop reading of Melville’s novel by over 150 people - gets started at noon this Saturday at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Robert “Bo” William (frequent WAWD reader and commenter) and myself will be reading at 8:30 PM and 8:40 PM Saturday evening. By our best estimates, we should be jumping in somewhere around “The Whiteness of the Whale.”

If you’re planning a trip to New Bedford, please read the WAWD New Bedford Travelog. (I hope the parking is still free on the weekends).

A. It’s no longer a Secret, and
B. Yes, it’s named after Bob Barker (a million dollar donor to Sea Shepherd…The Price Was Right! (sorry)).

The above drawing is for page 97. Check out all the “One Drawing For Every Page of Moby Dick” art here.

The newly discovered piece tells the story of an encounter with Indians in Tierra Del Fuego. A similar piece by the same scrimshander - Pte James Bute of the HMS Beagle - sold at auction for over 40,000 pounds as recently as last month. Only five other examples of Bute’s work, which chronicled one of history’s most important and momentous discovery expeditions, are known to exist.

Along with the scrimshaw, several letters from the original owner to Darwin himself were discovered.

Earlier this week, Paul Patkotak of Barrow’s Panigeo crew killed the whale pictured above. It’s a bit unclear from the blog post about it if he harpooned it or lanced it, or if he lanced it with a harpoon…but either way, he’s credited with killing the 32 foot whale.

Paul is a nine year old fourth grader at Ipalook Elementary School and “is very into his culture. He loves to go whaling with his uncle Qulliuq Pebley, who is the Captian of Panigeo Crew”

“The family was overjoyed in tears when they heard that their 9-year-old Paul harpooned the 32′ 7″ whale.”

Here’s the thing, though…I want you to go find a map of Alaska, look at it, and point to the place where you’d think human beings would be LEAST likely to live. And that’s where Barrow, Alaska is…it’s one of the northernmost cities in the entire world, and the northernmost in the US. Temperatures drop below freezing pretty much every day of the year there, and only get above freezing about 100 days per year.

It’s also a desert, averaging less that five inches of precipitation per year.

According to wikipedia: “On November 18 or 19 the sun goes down, and remains below the horizon for about 65 days until it re-appears, normally on January 22 or January 23.”

That’s hardcore.

(And Will Rogers died in a plane crash there.)

A while back, when I saw “The Cove,” I wondered whether or not the filmmakers would be able to attain their stated goal - to end the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. Well, there have been a couple reasons over the last few days to think that maybe there is such thing as “The Cove” Effect - and keep in mind that the film hasn’t even been released in Japan yet.

First, Broome, Australia is suspending its sister city program with Taiji, Japan. Knowing how Australians feel about Japan and sea mammal conservation, I find it sort of hilarious that Taiji even had a sister city in Australia. I can just imagine the person who runs Broome’s sister city program - “They do fucking WHAT?!?”

Secondly, and more importantly, Ric O’Barry got to Taiji on September 1 - the first day of dolphin killing season - and found the killing cove empty of both dolphin killers and dolphins, but FULL or reporters.

In a post on his blog called “September 1, 2009: A Good Day for Dolphins,” O’Barry says:

Today is September 1st, the first day of the dolphin slaughter season in Japan. But when I arrived today by bus from Kansai Airport with media representatives from all over the world, the notorious Cove from the movie was empty. There were no dolphin killers in sight.

Good for him. We’ll have to see if “The Cove” Effect has real staying power, or if the Japanese will be up to their old tricks next year, or next month, or even next week when the big media retreats. Although, O’Barry does point out that these are Japanese media who have NEVER bothered to cover Taiji at all in the past.

Hunters from the Kivalliq region of Nunavut caught a summer whale recently, a bowhead. The harpooner: Ross Tatty of Rankin Inlet (he’s probably up there in that picture).

A small bit of irony from Australia where the last few days have seen Premier Colin Barnett defend a natural gas installation in what appears to be whale country, while Environment Minister Peter Garrett had to manage his tempered excitement at getting to lobby the new Japanese government to stop whaling.

Over 150 humpback whales were recently spotted off Western Australia near the site of a planned natural gas installation. Environmentalists argue that the site is as significant as others that were ruled out due to whale activity, but the government is countering that the installation will not be disruptive and has no plans to 86 the gas project.

Meanwhile, Aussies and their Environment Minister are hoping the new center-left government of Japan - which just dislodged over a half century of conservative rule - will be more open to engaging in substantive talks on the prickly issue of Antarctic whale hunting.

This picture sums up about how much Australians are fed up with Japanese whaling:

If you’re not thinking about it already, google Jamie Yew.

But shoot the seals.

Above clip is from “Nice Dreams,” which I suppose is as good as any of their movies. Honestly, “Up In Smoke” holds up surprisingly well. I just watched it a couple weeks ago.

Hopefully, the slackness re frequency of updates is passed for a bit. I had a wordpress malfunction, then had a baby.

Available for your view pleasure through “the summer” at the Philadelphia Fabric Workshop And Museum. 52 feet of felt covered inflatable whale.

The whale is called Mocha Dick after the supposedly-real whale that inspired Moby Dick.