A small population of false killer whales that live near Hawaii might be added to the endangered species list by the U.S. Government. False killer whales look like killer whales, but they are actually black dolphins that grow can grow to 16 feet and weigh more than a ton.
Proponents of the listing believe that the local fishing industry deplete food stocks while accidentally capturing the false killer whales.
February 10th – The Whale
The Whale, is an award winning non-fiction book that delves into literature, history, science, anecdote, anthropology and art to explore our long and often difficult relationship with whales. Inspired by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, author Philip Hoare manages to dive between poetic lyrical writing and the harshest of scientific facts. Yet within these pages is so much information, from the size of sperm whale’s brain (bigger than ours) to the size of a right whale’s balls (far, far bigger than ours) to the myriad ways we have used the flesh, bone and blubber. At its heart, though, this is a prayer for the whales’ survival.
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.”
The Cook Inlet Beluga Whale population is the lowest it 15 years, down from 653 in 1994 to 321 this year.
One of the theories attempting to explain the decline is noise pollution from Anchorage Port, a busy shipping hub undergoing a lot of new construction. It’s believed that the beluga whales are sensitive to the commercial and construction noise. At four points along the port, hired whale watchers keep their eyes open for belugas, and if any are spotted, construction comes to a halt.
The port construction project won’t be completed until 2014.
Actor Conor Lovett and his director wife, Judy Hegerty Lovett, are bringing their one-man-play version of Moby Dick to Ventura’s Rubicon Theater next week. The Lovett pair are known for a producing a series of strong, minimalist one man shows in recent years, and Moby Dick is no exception. An rave-ish review in the Irish Times says of Conor Lovett, “He holds us spellbound as he catches the humour as well as the wisdom of Ishmael’s commentary, his pauses for thought, for memory, for finding the right word, reminding us that the story of this noble but melancholy ship, its crew, its quarry and its captain with the crucifixion in his face, is a story told by a man of honour and of mercy.”
Even though modern whaling was banned in 1966, and even though the blue whale was placed on the endangered species list in 1973, the largest creature ever to live on the planet earth still face many hazards; fishing gear, toxic waste and trash, and large ships. And while Santa Barbara channel is one of the best places in the world to see a blue whale, it’s also one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, making it a likely place for blue whales to get hit by ships. The NMFS recovery plan would address many of these hazards.
The Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. Whaling Museum in the front. Secret Society party in the back.
Next time you’re in the Hamptons, try to tear yourself away from the pool at Diddy’s place long enough to check out the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. It only costs five bucks to get in. Eight dollars gets you a ticket to the Whaling Museum and to the Customs House museum next door.
The Sag Harbor Whaling Museum is open daily during Spring, Summer and Fall months.
The jaw bone of a what’s left of a right whale welcomes visitors.
The jaw bone of a right whale says hello
The building, designed by architect Minard Lafever, was built in 1845 for Benjamin Huntting II, one of the principals of the S. & B. Huntting whaling company. The building changed hands a few times over the years, serving as a home for Sag Harbor philanthropist Mrs. Russell Sage and as a masonic lodge before becoming a full time museum back in the 40′s. (The Masons do still meet upstairs there – I’m still waiting for someone to recruit me by the way, a lot of my people were Masons)
Today, Sag Harbor‘s marina is full of ridiculously expensive yachts (and people trying to figure out who the yachts belong too), but in the 19th century, Sag harbor was an important part of America’s maritime commerce system, serving as an official port of entry into the United States and as the home of a significant whaling fleet.
Native Americans on Long Island had been shore whaling and drift whaling for centuries, and not long after settlement, Europeans got in on the act. In 1761, the Europeans built a wharf with tryworks in Sag Harbor. The Hope, the first Sag Harbor ship to leave port with a tryworks and furnace on board, sailed in 1784 and made it as far south as Brazil. In 1789, Sag Harbor was named a port of entry by Congress, and it remained a port of entry until 1913. In 1848, James Fenimore Cooper, author of Last of the Mohicans, established a whaling company in Sag Harbor. And really, from about that time, Sag Harbor’s whaling industry went into decline, due mostly to the usual suspects and factors; the gold rush, the Civil War, depleted whale stocks, more competitive options to whale hunting, etc.
If you were to ask me, “What did you learn today?” I would respond, “I learned that James Fenimore Cooper started a whaling company. Before today, I did not know that.”
The interior of the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum sort of reminds me of the cluttered antique shops that you find throughout coastal cities in the northeast and New England, and it sort of works actually. It’s a hodgepodge of stuff, and probably only about half of it has anything to do with whaling, but there’s some pretty interesting stuff there. E.g., it’s not every day you get to see George Washington‘s autograph (they’ve got a few other presidents’ signatures as well, what with all the port of entry documents and certificates).
George Washington loved freedom (and didn't entirely hate slavery).
I recall this room containing antique toys, a gun exhibit, a bunch of documents signed by dead presidents, some classroom-type information on whales, some natural curiosities (e.g., an ostrich egg), and some Indian artifacts.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen painted whale’s eardrums before.
Painted whale eardrums with scrimshaw and narwhal tusk
I’m sorry but “table croquet” seems like the worst idea that anybody ever had, ever.
I think they are building a new Strawberry at 42 E. 14th Street right now
I had no idea that hardtack was shaped like a giant saltine cracker. It actually looks better than I’d expected.
Eating too much hardtack - or not enough hardtack - gave sailors blurry vision
You want implements? They got your implements right here.
Whaling implements
And here’s something I’ve never seen before; a case containing different varieties and qualities of whale oils used by whale oil salesmen.
Samples of whale oils
Those are transcripts of the museums documents on top of that case. Pretty cool. Easy to get sucked in for a few minutes.
That dude was checking me out the whole time I was in there...
After checking out the whaling museum, I bailed on the custom’s house. I just don’t dig showing up at some old house and getting a one-on-one tour from some old lady, and that’s what I think was going to happen there. Instead, I bought this amazing antique wiener dog boot scraper at an antiques store.
Yes!
I had lunch at a place called the Dock House. It’s basically a clam shack right on the water, but since I ate and drank huge the night before, I didn’t get anything fried, just some grilled scallops and a salad. Weak, I know. But I make up for it with this ice cream cone.
At this point, I'd eaten half.
I know that I bought at least two other things; a marked-down piece of bean bag furniture, and something else that escapes me now. Actually, it was some locally produced honey. Sag Harbor seemed pretty cool to me. The little downtown/city center area has all the obligatory items; drugstore, market, antique shops, boutiques, and restaurants. Oh, and galleries. As an example, it’s neither the best nor the worst. It’s kind of like Cape Cod mixed with wine country. Right out of town there’s some farmland, produce stands, vineyards, etc. Actually, now that I think about it, it seemed a lot less crowded and busy than the Cape, even middle of the week during the summer. There’s definitely some Hamptons-trash spillover walking about, but I suppose I’d prefer French girls with gigantic sunglasses, high-heels and hot pants to packs of dudes in Red Sox caps any day.
Today would’ve been Herman Melville’s 190th birthday. He was born on this day in 1819 at the location pictured above, 6 Pearl St., Lower Manhattan, New York City. And what better day than today to follow up on this promise I made many months back to visit the site wearing my Herman Melville tshirt.
I had a rather long day of remembering Melville. In fact, I made a sort of double pilgrimage to his birthplace. I started the day with an eight mile run – it’s almost exactly four miles from my house to 6 Pearl Street. After that, I lounged about in bed a bit and read Chapter LIV: The Town-Ho’s Story. This was followed by a trip to Mercadito Cantina for their all-you-can-drink brunch, which pretty much had nothing to do with Herman Melville or Moby Dick.
Then I read a little Bartleby. Then I fell asleep watching cage fighting. And then, we drove downtown, snapped a few pictures among the homeless at Melville’s birthplace, and had a beer in Battery Park.
Anyways, as you can see from this picture, the cast of Melville’s head is ensconced behind a sheet of Plexiglas that’s perpetually clouded with condensation. And on top of that, it’s not listed among the “places on interest” section on the downtown maps that you can find around that part of the city.
Look, nobody loves a whaling museum more than me...except maybe Andrew Harper, International Travel Writer
It’s probably hard for today’s Americans – if not for most of the planet’s 21st century inhabitants – to imagine a world without on-demand illumination. No street lights or desk lamps or wall switches. But that world existed as recently as the 19th century. People who lived in cities were held hostage by darkness. They shuttered businesses and rushed home at dusk to avoid criminals. And people everywhere, if they could afford it, lit their households with an assortment candles and lamp oils that burned dim, dirty and smelly.
One of the many oils that people burned for light was whale oil. When compared to the other available options, whale oil was the best, especially sperm whale oil, which burned brightest and cleanest. It was also the most expensive. Aside from candles and lamp fuel, whale oil had countless other uses; machinery lubrication, rust-proofing, cosmetics, nutrition, detergent and pharmaceuticals.
Again, it’s hard to imagine, but in the bigger scheme of things, it wasn’t that long ago that undernourished groups of men in wooden sailing ships chased whales across the globe on 3-5 year expeditions. These men basically killed the whales with their bare hands, then dragged them in a row boat, sometimes ten miles or more, back to a larger boat where they chopped them up and cooked off their fat in giant metal pots that sat atop an open fire. During the late 18th and early 19th century, whaling was one of the top five industries in America, and many banks issued paper notes and currency depicting whaling scenes. Whaling was symbolic of the young nation’s ingenuity, progress and prosperity.
And – yes, I’m going somewhere with this – during that same time period, the people of Nantucket pioneered, and them dominated, the global whaling industry. Nantucket was the 3rd largest city in Massachusetts, and its business and political leaders had significant clout and lobbying power in the nation’s capital. But by the middle of the 19th century, Nantucket’s whaling industry was in considerable decline. The “Great Fire” of 1846, fueled by nothing less than whale oil, destroyed the main town, scorched 36 acres of land, and left hundreds destitute and homeless. On top of that, silt build up in the harbor kept the larger whaling ships from entering and leaving port. Then came the rise of petroleum. And about the same time, the Civil war started, when the Confederates destroyed dozens of Yankee whaling ships.
But Nantucket survived, in a way, by reinventing itself as a resort and vacation destination. Today, the yearly population of 10,000 grows at least five fold during the summer, and that’s where my journey to Nantucket begins – fourth of July weekend, on a ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket.
I’d originally planned a longer stay in Nantucket, but terrible weather that week combined with the sedentary aspect of my pregnant wife forced me into a solo day trip. The ride over was foggy (see video below), with extremely limited visibility, therefore no random ferry whales were sighted.
My initial impressions of Nantucket are as follows.
First, on the ferry ride over, I found myself seated next to a group of 6-8 college-age sausage heads who loudly discussed the positive traits of the various girls that they knew, even the fat chicks (“She’s a really nice girl actually. I just hate for her that she’s so fucking fat.”). When they wrapped this up, they argued about the best way to make a beer bong. I shit you not, this conversation lasted 15 minutes. 20 minutes?. Then they all hoped aloud that they’d find a hardware store on the island that had all the necessary beer bong parts (and cheap!).
Secondly, as we pulled into the harbor, the clouds broke and the sun came out. The day became quite beautiful, so I decided to sit on a bench (across the street from the whaling museum) to get my bearings and to re-assess my itinerary, which was built for rain, rain, and more rain. And just as I did this – again, I shit you not – four teenage girls in a beat up Ford F150 full of ladders and lawnmowers and shit pulled up at the curb and the girl at the passenger window got my attention and said, “Hey, you think you could buy us some beer?” Aside from the obvious “Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought it would happen to me, but…” joke/scenario, my brain processed this fact: These girls might be so young that they don’t even know any 21-year olds. wtf? I declined, politely, to buy them beer. “We’ll give you the money,” she said. Again, I’m not making this up. I said, “Sorry, but I can’t.” And when they asked why I said, “Because I’m on probation and I don’t want to go back to jail.” (Feel free to use this line without attribution. It works on so many levels…)
So, yeah, you get the picture. And there are a lot of boats in the harbor that look like this.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I would kill you for a boat like one of these.
Anyways, all this talk about beer got me in the mood for beer, so I headed back to the Gazebo bar near the wharf, and I drank myself a couple beers.
This blackberry wheat beer was not the best beer I've ever had, but I had more than one.
Done drinking, I set off to see the sights. Around town, there too many references to the town’s whaling past to count, but here are a couple examples:
Queequeg's wasn't open yet, or I probably would've eaten there.
The Nantucket Whaler Guest House - 4.5 dots or circles or whatever on Trip Advisor (never stayed there myself)
According to the Hy-Line cruise web sheet, “Nantucket has more buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places than any other place in Massachusetts and more than 800 houses still standing that were built before the Civil War.” And after a short walk from the center of town, I arrived at “The Oldest House” (aka The Jethro Coffin house). It was built for Jethro as a wedding gift in 1686. Jethro was a blacksmith, and even over 300 years ago, Jethro Coffin was totally a badass name.
The Oldest House on Nantucket - there's a garden out back.
After breathing my beer breath all over the nice old lady from the historical society and telling her that if there weren’t any really cool folk-arty whale-related artifacts inside the house then I didn’t need a tour, she sent me off looking for some trail head that she said would lead me through a park to something called “Something Natural.” I thought she was fucking with me, but sure enough, I found this little park behind the Oldest House. It was really sort of nice, and after a few minutes of walking towards the sounds of people, I came upon a busy street corner and a very popular cafe (that didn’t seem to warrant a picture). But here’s the park:
Entrace to Coffin Park behind the Oldest House
As you can see, that fog was really burned off by now.
In 2006, Forbes magazine reported that Nantucket had the highest median property value of any Massachusetts zip code. So the problem, to me, with a place like Nantucket is that while it’s capable of embracing its whaling past by putting up quaint images of whales all over the place, it’s otherwise mostly devoid of irony and kitsch. But there are exceptions to every rule. And that’s a good thing, because this yard sheep thing is freakin’ awesome.
I actually have a college degree in photography...but you couldn't tell that by the way I composed this picture (or by anything else that I do with my life)
(Update: in the above picture, I just noticed that if you look closely, you can see the baby sheep looking at the mommy sheep from the porch!)
As I always say, no trip to Nantucket is incomplete without a trip out to the Old Mill.
Another award-winning photograph
Nantucket became an island about 5000-6000 years ago. Some believe that it was first spotted by the Norse as early as the 11th Century. The island’s indigenous population, the Wampanoag Indians, lived there undisturbed until the island was deeded by the English to a man named Thomas Mayhew.
Nantucket island from the air
In 1659, Mayhew sold his interest in the island to Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swayne, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleafe, John Swayne and William Pike, “for the sum of thirty Pounds…and also two beaver hats, one for myself, and one for my wife.” While these early settlers were, in part, trying to escape intolerant Puritans on the mainland, the island’s earliest European settlers were not Quakers when they arrived. Quakerism arrived at the very beginning of the 1700′s and eventually became the quasi-official religion of Nantucket’s ruling class, and therefore America’s whaling industry. The Quaker Meeting House below, built in 1838, was neither the earliest nor the largest built on the island. It was actually built to accommodate one of the three sects that had formed by that time, the Wilburites.
Quaker Meeting House, Nantucket
So, having hoofed it about a bit, it was time to see the main attraction, the Nantucket Whaling Museum…
I think these guys are after Moby Dick
After paying my admission, a friendly attendant ushered me into the lecture hall where a presentation (that I’ve probably seen 3 or 4 times before) was already in progress. It was actually during this talk, however, where I learned the stat that’s referenced in the title of this article, i.e., that 90 percent of the island’s homes are owed by non-full time residents. I don’t know if the guy giving the talk was plugged into the census bureau or not, but he sure did give a damn fine whale talk.
The lectures are given in the main hall (pictured below), which features a whale boat, various whaling weapons and implements, and the skeleton of a sperm whale. The whale actually washed up on a Nantucket beach on New Year’s Day 1998 and died. The museum cleaned and preserved the bones and then added it to the public collection when the building was remodeled in 2005.
The Nantucket Whaling Museum
The museum actually resides within a restored candleworks that was built in 1847, one year after the “Great Fire.” A not insignificant portion of the museum is set aside for the restored candle factory, and no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to get interested enough to get my mind wrapped around candle making. But if you’re the kind of person who geeks out on 19th century candle making, then the Nantucket Whaling Museum is the place for you. Everybody geeks out on something. I once saw this Portuguese guy at the Mystic Seaport Museum force his family to listen to him explain, in excruciating detail, the art of coopering while holding them hostage in the hold of the Charles W. Morgan.
Spermacetti products: candles, oil, and watch oil
This is some sort of press and it was somehow used in making candles
Since my base of general 19th-Century American whaling history is pretty solid, I don’t really visit whaling museums to bone up on Whaling 101 type stuff. I’m there to see the oddities and curiosities, the local color, and specific collections or individual pieces. In those aspects, the Nantucket Whaling Museum is pretty strong. The sperm whale jawbone below was gathered in 1865, and it’s asserted that it would have had to come from a whale 87 feet long (keep in mind that sperm whales are said to grow to between 50 and 70 feet long).
The sperm whale is the largest toothed animal on the planet
There are also some artifacts from the infamous Bounty (the Fletcher Christian/Capt. Bligh fiasco). The boxes in right part of the photograph below (bad shot, sorry) were gathered on Pitcairn Island in 1808 by Nantucket Captain Mayhew Folger. To the left of those boxes are Robert Louis Stevenson‘s funeral mat and pillow which were brought back from the Marquesas.
Robert Lewis Stevenson stuff (left). Bounty stuff right).
And here’s some random narwhal tusks and some other weird stuff just laying around on top of a shelf without any sort of description or explanation:
Random whale-related stuff
One of the curiosities that I did NOT see was a sea chest from the doomed 1819-1820 voyage of the Essex, which was rammed and sunk by a whale. What happened next is sort of a long story, but the 21-man crew set out in the 3 whale boats, and by the time they were recovered, there were only eight survivors and seven of the crew had been eaten (one of which was killed and eaten). Anyways, the box is the only remaining artifact from that voyage of the Essex. It was discovered by another whaler that passed by. I’ve been to the Nantucket Whaling museum more times that I can count and I’ve never seen this damn box.
Oh well...I guess I'll have to go back.
It’s probably safe to say that the Nantucket Whaling Museum has the best collection of scrimshaw and whalebone products that I’ve ever seen. I think a guy that works there told me that only about a fifth of their pieces are even on display (I think he was hitting me up for money for a new scrimshaw wing). And there’s a good Frederick Myrick/Susan’s tooth display in the whalebone/scrimshaw room.
Susan's teeth by Frederick Myrick and journal of the Susan's captain, Reuben Russell
I’m not an antique furniture geek, but I get the distinct impression that furniture geeks everywhere would tumesce upon entering the room full of 17th and 18th century New England furniture.
A candle stand, which would have supported spermacetti candles at some point
Antique chest of drawers at the Nantucket Whaling Museum
During the most recent round of remodeling at the museum, a roof deck was opened. It’s good for grabbing a bit of fresh air, but the view is a bit unspectacular, in my opinion.
View of Nantucket Harbor from the roof of the Nantucket Whaling Museum.
This cool whale-related weather vane sits atop the museum.
A whalthervane sits atop the Nantucket Whaling Museum
And that’s about it. I wish I had a bit more on food, drink, lodging, etc., but maybe next time. The whole time I was there, I only consumed those crappy beers, a couple pieces of pizza, and an ice cream cone. The latter two establishments, I can’t even recall their names, but I’ve added everywhere else, aside from a few shops, to the map below.
I honestly don’t know if it’s one of the ten places in the US that you should see before you die. I can think of almost ten places just in Hawaii, but Nantucket and the Nantucket Whaling Museum are pretty cool, I guess. I go there at least once per year. For longer vacation stays, I actually prefer the Vineyard, but then again, the Vineyard’s not the spiritual center of American whaling and one of the main settings of the greatest novel ever written in the English language. And on that note, I’ll add that if you’d like to know more about Nantucket and Whaling, there are three books that I’d recommend right off the top of my head. In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick is the story of the whaleship Essex and its crew of survivors/cannibals. Leviathan, The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin is exactly what it purports to be, and it’s actually a very non-dry (wet?) read. It fills in a lot of the gaps that you don’t always get in the museum lectures and exhibits: stuff like the mixed allegiances of the Nantucketers during the American revolution, for example. And, of course, Moby Dick by Herman Melville. All these books are great summer reads that you can blow through quickly (yes, even Moby Dick).
I’ll part with this final impression of modern day Nantucket. After I wrapped up my gift shopping for wife and family, I sat down on a bench along the Steamboat Wharf road to eat a slice of pizza and to wait for my ferry back to Cape Cod. As I did this, the car ferry from the mainland was unloading on the wharf, and Nantucket’s summer citizenry drove into town. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a redheaded girl running along the sidewalk and rounding a corner across the street. I didn’t entirely catch exactly what happened, but the next thing I know she was on the sidewalk holding her ankle and crying. I hate to sound like the bad Samaritan here, but nothing I gathered about the way she approached the corner seemed to justify the histrionics, and I assumed that she’d get up and walk it off pretty quickly. And on top of that, there were cops at every corner directing all this incoming traffic. As I processed this thought, I heard a car horn honking. I looked up, and I saw two women in their 50′s in an Audi. They appeared to be trying to get my attention. They pointed at me and then at the girl, and then the woman driving seemed to shrug at me in disbelief. They clearly expected me to help the girl, and it was clear as well that they planned to sit there and browbeat me until I did so. But here’s the thing. I was across the street and diagonally distant from the girl, maybe as much as 40 or 50 feet away. And the women were RIGHT NEXT TO THE GIRL, like 5 or 6 feet away from her. They honked again. I got up, ambled across the street and approached the girl, more than half expecting to see some sort of Joe Theismann-esque injury. I could see nothing wrong with her ankle. I did notice that she was much younger than I thought though. Maybe 12 or 13. I asked for her name and that’s about as far as I got before a couple cops arrived. And about then is when I heard the woman driving the Audi go, “Were you just gonna sit there and do nothing?”
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