Save the whales
In the twentieth century, whaling became more industrialised and deadly. But during the 1970s, Aotearoa New Zealand’s attitude to whaling changed – from general support to active opposition. Now, whale watching is one of New Zealand’s most lucrative tourist enterprises, and former whalers take an active role in their conservation.
Extinction on the horizon?
Even as late as the 1950s, New Zealanders welcomed whaling fleets to their ports. Their attitude began to change with the collapse of the small shore-based whaling industry in the country in 1964 – a direct result of overfishing by foreign fleets in the previous decade. People were shocked by the near-total disappearance of humpback whales that normally migrated to New Zealand shores.
In the 1996 Spectrum audio documentary The Last of the Whale Hunters, some of the very last Aotearoa New Zealand whaling gunners, Charlie Heberley and his son Joe, reflected on what they saw in the 50s and 60s, when they witnessed the populations plummet:
We were devastated. As time wore on, we knew that whaling was going to become history.. There was a lot of devastated whalers. We knew that the Japanese and Russians had got in and slaughtered the pod of whales that were feeding the New Zealand coast.The Japanese and the Russians, they weren’t satisfied in slaughtering them down the Antarctic, they started coming up and taking them on the New Zealand coast.We got blamed here in New Zealand for killing the whales out. Well let me give you an example. In 1960 was the record number of whales taken in New Zealand. That year Cook Strait whalers took 226 whales in the season.Well that same season, the Japanese and the Russians took 42,000 whales down the Antarctic. And that’s only what they reported. By the experience we had in some of their reporting, there was a lot more than that caught. [Their factory ships] could process 70 whales in 24 hours.
The beginning of protections
Consciousness raised
The Marine Mammals Protection Act 1978
The International Whaling Commission
Whaling today
Whale meat is one of the most expensive foods in the world. High-quality minke whale tail meat reportedly sells in Tokyo for about NZ $350 per kilo.
Japan left the IWC in 2019, and while that means the whales in the Antarctic and South Pacific are now free of Japanese whalers, those in their own territorial waters are once again the basis of a commercial industry.
Canned whale meat in Japan, by halfrain via Flickr CC BY SA 2.0
Official position
From 1991, opposition to whaling became official – the promotion of a global ban on commercial whaling entered New Zealand Government policy. After a 200-year association with whaling, New Zealand is now a ‘committed conservation country’ and is recognised as a world leader in marine mammal protection.
Yesterday’s whalers today
Ex-whalers looking for whales as part of a conservation survey in the Cook Strait, 2004. Photograph by Simon Childerhouse, reproduced courtesy of Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai
Today, the Department of Conservation has recruited some former whalers to track humpback whales for a different purpose; to monitor their numbers as part of an annual survey. For two weeks at the end of June (the peak of the humpback whales’ migration through Cook Strait), a handful of ex-whalers set up a canvas tent high on a hillside on Arapawa Island and spend whole days, from sun-up to sun-down, peering through their binoculars for the telltale spout from a blowhole. Amid winter storms and wild seas, it is a challenge, but one they embrace for its camaraderie and the chance to contribute to the conservation of these ocean giants.
When they spot one with certainty (false alarms are paid for with a penalty of whiskey for the group), they radio to DOC staff on a nearby patrolling ecotourism boat. The DOC team take off after the animal to gather photographs and DNA in order to identify the individuals, and alongside their colleagues across the South Pacific, piece together the route of their annual migrations. Numbers remain even lower than those seen around the 1960 collapse.
Other threats
Though the whaling industry is now much smaller than it was, many other threats from humans remain. Chiefly these are boat strikes when whales enter increasingly busy shipping lanes, drowning after being caught in fishing lines or nets, ingestion of pollution or plastic waste, and climate change altering their ancestral breeding and feeding grounds. We’ll look at those more closely next week.
In the next step we’ll wrap up the week, and reflect on everything we’ve covered about whaling and its cultural, social, economic, and conservation implications.
Further Resources
Whaling, the Department of Conservation
Whale Hunting, New Zealand Geographic
Japan’s scientific whaling ruse is over, Foreign Policy Magazine
Big Fish: A Brief History of Whaling, National Geographic
The Significance of Whales to Aotearoa New Zealand
The Significance of Whales to Aotearoa New Zealand
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