Tag Archives: whale watching

The Clash and the Titan

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Stick with me, this is about Whales.

Hearing properly for the first time London Calling by The Clash was one of those life-defining moments. I don’t wish to exaggerate but I imagine the unveiling of Picasso’s Guernica was but a ripple in the artistic pond compared to what this record meant (and means) to me: Mick Jones’ atom bomb guitar punctuating Joe Strummer’s desperate howls. I was, and I mean this quite literally, transfixed with every pulsing, sweating, sneering word and note. If He played in a band, this is what God sounded like when He brought His A-game.

Looking back on the experience with hindsight, I always knew this was what music was supposed to sound like. Before the needle even rested in the groove I carried a genetic imprint in my fibres of what would happen to all of my endorphins, hair follicles and cells when music was at its best and most affecting. But until that moment, it was largely a matter of faith, kept alive by what history has proved to be a pretty tasty collection of my Father’s records. Records like London Calling turned me into a true believer.

Seeing a whale for the first time brought about much the same crisis of physiology and mental instability. Despite being steeped in affection for the wild and wild things from an early age this was a piece of blubbery, evolutionary liveliness on a scale which was unlike anything I’d experienced before. The animal, a fin whale in this case, was breathing, stinking and swooshing just a few yards away from me and I was suddenly plunged into a depth of feeling for which I was quite unprepared.

Up until that point, I had seen endless hours of footage and countless photographs: I knew what whales did, how they moved, what they looked like, that there were species that seemed impossibly strange, that they made noises and leapt and breached and swirled and blew. I knew all of that. But seeing the thing… that was a needle dropped on a very deep groove indeed.

Since then I have seen thousands of cetaceans. It would be cool and detached of me to say that the experience of that first whale is dimmed slightly in the light of the sheer volume of blubber I’ve observed since. But that would be a fabrication: Much like the first listen of that record it wasn’t a one-off high but instead acted as an elevator of everything after that; It was a new lens through which I could view everything else rather than a temporary hit. Because of that, my experiences around whales and dolphins since then have built in a slow-burning intensity and never, but never, get boring.

And years after that first listen, I met Mick Jones, guitarist on that beautiful mess that is London Calling. He had just come off stage at an event which I was involved in and in the backstage bustle he looked exhausted but elated after a barnstorming set with his band of the time, Big Audio Dynamite. Always intending to play the cool and reluctant observer it was inevitable that this façade would crumble in the presence of yer man. He was with an eye-wateringly beautiful woman but I barely noticed the poor girl as I shambled up to him and proffered a hand.  He was, of course, the quintessential rock n’ roll gent: pleasant, affable, self deprecating and patiently putting up with my ridiculous questions before autographing a scrap of paper and leaving me beaming.

Like I said, some things do not diminish with the passage of time. I, and my pleasures in life, will age well having been gilded somehow. Because whales (and The Clash) can do that.

Asher Jay: “Every morning that I wake, I wake up with that whale”

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Asher Jay is a designer, artist, writer and activist and founder of Garbagea and Sea Speak Sphere. She’s a staunch supporter of animal rights, wildlife conservation and sustainable development and she uses her fashion, art and writing to raise awareness. Over the years she has produced several graphic campaigns, written many narratives, and pieced together numerous collections and canvases to eloquently elucidate the serious issues currently assailing our fragile planet.  Through her extensive travels across the globe, and her studies in art history, she has developed an aesthetic sensibility that is amalgam of contrasting cultural influences. All her work is anchored by the deep commitment she harbors toward the realisation of a collective future. WhaleFest asked her to tell us about the big moment of realisation.

I am fascinated by cetaceans, because of their titanic size, illuminated eyes, sentient awareness of their place on this blue marble and their ability to share familial bonds much like humans and apes do on land. I find them to be profoundly enlightened beings, infused with the grandeur of the ocean expanse, brimming with memories that happen at depths we have only now begun to explore. They glide through the unchartered salty membranes of the deep and the shifting swells of the surface, experiencing time with quiet tranquility, undaunted by urgency and fear.  Their immensity impregnates their being with power but they do not express this through acts of violence, and this inherent peace can be seen in their eyes as they stare back consciously at you.

When I caught my first glimpse of a Blue Whale I knew that my life had changed forever, and my pulse bonded instantly to this fellow mammal several times my measure, whose arteries I could have effortlessly crawled through as a child. Every morning that I wake, I wake up with that whale, wherever she may be, connected by a singular sun and moon that schedules our distinct lives. I will forever cherish the few moments she spared to relate to me, and it is this love that I feel in every cell in my frame towards this behemoth of the blue that goads me to support her kind, as well as other cetaceans. Every whale and dolphin I have encountered in my life has taken the time to barter a sliver of their soul for mine, and in this way I feel linked to these discerning sea souls every moment of every day.

Of course my mother has seen how emphatically passionate I am about these pelagic goliaths in person, when I took her along on an excursion, and she is convinced that I was a whale in my previous life and in all likelihood still one. As an afterthought she added, “Maybe in this bipedal form you can save your kind better.” I prefer this explanation as it increases my dimensions from being 5 foot ten inches short to 100 feet long and as a marvelous bonus I get to be underwater 24/7!

All images are copyright and are courtesy of Asher Jay, reproduced with her kind permission. Thanks, Asher.

Drawing the boundary…

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In Jim Crumley’s book, The Winter Whale, he describes how in November 1893 a humpback whale followed herring shoals into the Tay estuary and travelled as far upstream as Dundee docks. For the humpback, the North Sea was already unfamiliar territory and it found itself in even more hostile surroundings in the waters of the biggest whaling fleet in Britain. Although it gained celebrity status it was ultimately hunted and killed but not before suffering an undignified, protracted death. To settle ownership of an animal that had already gained the town a handsome sum in visitor revenue, a public auction was held for the corpse. The eventual owner had the whale hauled to Dundee where sixpence would get you a close encounter with The Monster as it had been named. For three shillings more you could have your photograph taken sitting at a table inside the whale’s propped open mouth. From there it went on tour by train on a specially built cradle to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London and Edinburgh, before returning to Dundee. It was whale watching, Jim but not as we know it.

This extraordinary story has its modern parallels. The whale watching industry has proved over and over that the animals are worth more money to sovereign states alive than they are dead. In countries like Sri Lanka, which sits astride one of the planet’s best stretches of ocean to see blue whale, there is a burgeoning realisation that a yield is to be had from the animals they once feared. And, as history has sternly warned us, this can signal the start of a race to own that yield, to take possession of the product that gives and gives.

This race is finely balanced as to whether, as an open access resource, it means life or death for the animals themselves.  What’s more, this is a product that has few direct maintenance costs but the cost of not treating your star performer with kid gloves can be ultimate. Just as the spoilt backstage diva requires only the finest oysters washed in the tears of doves, the whale needs a marine environment that is in every respect balanced, fruitful and pristine. So while the whale watching boat operator takes his revenue, who owns the animals themselves? Who therefore can we turn to convince them that the whales are theirs?

The notion of ownership of course sits uncomfortably with any wild animal and most of all an animal that migrates through time zones, oceans and travels the water column as easily as we do an escalator. These and other wild animals can never be owned, by governments or individuals or Disney or Coca-Cola. But their existence and interaction with us does have a value which is both fiscal and human as anyone who has encountered a whale will fervently and sometimes fanatically testify.

Ultimately it is of course not a question of ownership but stewardship. Surely, the ultimate aim of conservation efforts the world over is for every whale nation whose waters contain these astonishing animals to realise that what they have is like a gift: It is bought and paid for by me but is given unconditionally and without contract to you, it is now yours to enjoy, to be looked after and cherished. In turn, every human that professes a connection with the natural world can and must receive this gift gratefully, understanding that there is now a collective investment; A shareholding not in ownership but responsibility.