Blue Whales Sing The Blues

Scientists among your kind have recently reported that the whalesong of male Blue Whales has been getting quieter over the past few decades in all the oceans of the world. They interpret this fact as evidence that the Blue Whale population is increasing and, as a result, males do not have to sing as loud to find a mate. Wait! What? Float that by me again—because male Blue Whales are singing more softly, there must be more of them. How about the possibility that they are singing more softly because they are sad. Sad at man’s continuing destruction of the seas. Sad at the drowning deaths of thousands of whales and dolphins every year, entangled in open ocean drift nets. Sad at the global warming that is destroying their feedstocks such as krill that cannot live in warmer waters. Sad at the annual slaughter of Minke and Fin Whales by bloodthirsty Japanese and Norwegians, the true murderous pirates of the high seas. And most of all, sad because they know few among your kind care about them. I could go on but you get the point. Male Blue Whales are singing the blues and it is not because there is a female nearby.

Blue Lady Down

This week a 70 foot, female Blue Whale was struck and killed by a ship in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Northern California. Her body washed ashore only hours after the ship reported hitting a whale a few miles away. Ironically, it was an ocean research vessel. The Blue Lady down had two deep gashes on her back, one of which cut the vertebral column. While scientists among your kind have not yet determined the cause of death, based on these facts, I think it likely that she drowned. As tragic as her death is to me and to all beings, I find some small measure of solace in that she did not suffer the final indignity of being torn apart by the Great White Sharks that frequent those same waters. And so another of our endangered mighty Blue Whales has died, and with her passing we have lost one of the most beautiful and largest of all creatures that God ever made. And for that, the oceans are a sadder place and this is a lesser planet.

The day the last king dies...

One day in the not too distant future the last king of the Seven Seas, a mighty Blue Whale, will die. It will happen like this: one hundred feet in length, weighing two hundred tons, he is the largest creature that has ever lived on the planet. As intelligent as man, he out smarted this arrogant and ruthless descendant of apes for over one hundred years. In his youth, he learned to avoid ships with pointed bows and bloody decks, and ugly little men hunched over harpoon cannons, that slaughtered great whales by the hundreds of thousands. Throughout his life, he dodged fifty-mile long drift nets that drowned other whales and dolphins, leaving their bloated bodies to suffer the final indignity of being savaged by sharks. For decades, he swam through polluted seas, clogged with oil, and filth, and plastic; and in the twilight of his years, he struggled to find enough food in ever-warming waters to sustain his enormous bulk while other great whales slowly starved to death. Finally, one day when he can no longer find any others of his kind left in all the oceans of the world, he will close his eyes for the last time and in a sad and lonely silence slowly sink into the depths. Gone. Forever. And with his passing, humankind will have lost something it can never recover—its very soul.