OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2016
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
Have the humpbacks forgiven us our trespasses?
W
hales pirouetting out of the Colum-
bia like Winnebago-size trout make
some of my friends think of Moses
and the Egyptian plagues: Can locust storms
and fl oods of frogs be far behind? They must
be fl eeing a ravaged ocean …
However, for most of us, these past two
humpback summers have been good portents,
an indication our river is so clean and bountiful
it can feed friendly levi-
athans. And if they can
tolerate being so near
us, maybe we’re not so
awful after all.
If humpbacks didn’t
exist, our ancient story-
tellers would have made
them up. Giant crea-
tures with grooves in
their vast gullets so as
to swiftly slip through
Matt
the sea, singing ethe-
Winters
real songs of freedom
that endlessly echo through the black canyons
of the fathomless deep — they are the stuff of
wildest imagination.
Not all whales are so charismatic. I’ll be
condemned as some kind of a heartless here-
tic, but gray whales strike me as being dull as
dairy cows. We once took our daughter out in
a Zodiak to visit some off the coast of Nayarit,
mothers and calves fattening in warm Mexican
waters before migrating north. Maybe, a sea-
son later, they swam by the black basalt head-
lands here where I walk the dog. At least with
cattle in a fi eld, there is a guttering little spark
of curiosity — they’ll lumber over like dim-
witted toddlers hoping for a magic trick. But
the gray whales merely breathed in and out,
their salty exhalations like the exhaust from
some sleepy seaside cavern where enchanted
sailors never awake.
Humpbacks now, what verve! Based on
amateur videos the past couple weeks, you
can imagine them giggling like underwater
schoolgirls before rocketing into the air just
beside or behind a fl abbergasted Buoy 10 fi sh-
erman. Staid scientists always caution us to
resist attaching human-like emotions to wild
animals, but what else can this be but sheer
joy of life? I’ve always wanted to be reborn
as an otter, but the humpbacks are making me
reconsider.
Why whales now?
The Northeast Pacifi c is a bit of a mess,
with a hangover the infamous “Blob” still
making seawater warmer at depth than it ought
to be. Last year, I and others wondered if con-
ditions in the ocean might have denuded it
of the nutritious little anchovies, herring and
other fi sh that comprise an ever moving feast
for humpbacks, Chinook salmon and species
nearer the apex of the food pyramid. And it’s
conceivable that this situation did in fact nudge
humpbacks into the river.
Here’s a more optimistic speculation: What
if humpbacks historically used the expan-
sive and usually quite salty Columbia estu-
ary as habitat, but have only now recovered to
something like a normal population? Might it
be, I wonder, that the humpbacks we’re see-
ing now are hardy pioneers rediscovering a
favorite old hunting ground last used by their
great-great-grandparents in the time before
rampant 19th century whaling drove them to
the brink of extinction? Maybe humpbacks are
perfectly normal here in a long-term sense.
A brief history of Pacifi c whaling
Yankee whalers had a devastating impact
on Pacifi c marine mammals, cleaning out one
pocket of whales, seals and otters after another.
Impacts multiplied after the great Northwest
coast whaling grounds were discovered in
1838, according to “A History of the Ameri-
can Whale Fishery,” (1907) by Walter Sheldon
Tower. When highly lucrative Arctic whaling
began in 1848, whalers started to be based on
this side of the continent, mostly out of Cal-
ifornia. With the arrival of railroads after the
Civil War, San Francisco in effect became the
nation’s whaling capital, as whale oil from
the far north could be landed there and then
quickly shipped by rail to the East.
(As an aside, the presence of Northern
whaling ships led to the Pacifi c Coast’s only
nautical involvement in the Civil War, when
Oregonian/Private Collection
Reported in September 1963 to be perhaps the largest whale ever landed in Pacific Northwest waters, this 70-foot, 65-ton fin
whale was brought to Warrenton by Skipper Eben Parker of Astoria and his crew consisting of Frank Parker, gunner, and Frank
Welch, winchman. Parker used a 50-mm gun and exploding-head harpoon to kill the whale. A separate crew working for Hval-
fangst-Oregon butchered locally landed whales. Paid based on species, they earned $22 per linear foot for fin whales, which can
grow to nearly 90 feet in length. Fin whales are once again being sighted in local waters, where they and blue whales sometimes
congregate above offshore canyons to feed on tiny marine creatures.
Private Collection
Pacific Steam Whaling Co., based in San Francisco, was one of several firms that made a
fortune hunting whales in the North Pacific, Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean in the late-18th
and early-19 centuries. Whale blubber was rendered into valuable oil, while bones and
baleen were used for a wide array of purposes in the pre-plastics era — everything from
ladies’ corsets to chimney-sweep brushes.
the CSS Shenandoah cruised into high Arctic
waters, capturing many whalers. Unaware of
Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865, the Shenan-
doah fi red the last shots of the war in the Ber-
ing Sea off the coast of Alaska between June
22 and 28, 1865.)
Smaller operations continued into the 20th
century, including for example the American
Pacifi c Whaling Co., which wintered in Mey-
denbauer Bay on Lake Washington, now part
of Bellevue.
Locally, Bioproducts Inc. of Oregon whaled
out of Warrenton, harvesting about 13 whales
— including two humpbacks — between 1960
and 1965. The meat was sold to feed chickens
and fur-farm mink. For reasons that are no lon-
ger easy to discern, NASA had some use for
the oil in the Mercury space program, but most
was sold to the Mt. Hood Soap Co.
The son of one participant recalled that
ground whale meat tasted just like hamburger.
British Columbia whaling was winding
down in the same period, but still amounted
in 1959 to 369 fi n whales, 259
sperm, 185 sei, 28 blue and 27
humpbacks — a total of 868.
All this suggests to me that
any whale would have been a fool
to come near humans for an awful
long time. Luckily for us, they never
mounted an effective counterattack.
Early traditions
On the U.S. West Coast, the Makah
Tribe on the northwest tip of the Olympic
Peninsula is best known for a whaling tradi-
tion, one which they’ve sought to revive
in recent years as an essen-
tial attribute of their
culture.
Here around the mouth of the Columbia,
there is less of an oral recollection of whal-
ing. Charles Cultee of Bay Center, Wash-
ington, one of the last handful of surviving
native speakers of the Chinook language, in
1890 told ethnologist Franz Boas of whal-
ing traditions. But they primarily appear
to involve harvesting whales that became
stranded on beaches or washed ashore still
fresh enough to scavenge.
Among the Clatsop Tribe on the south
side of the river, for instance, Cultee reported
there was a routine practice of always car-
rying knives, carrying straps and mats to be
ready in case a whale became available —
suggesting it happened fairly often. A large
piece of whale meat was valuable enough to
trade for a blanket.
Sadly, it is easy imagine that local Indian
populations had been so decimated that local
whale-hunting practices had been forgotten
before anyone sought their recollections.
In a 2014 paper for the University of
Washington, Kayla Krantz wrote, “The
archaeological site of Par-Tee in Seaside,
Oregon has, over the course of excava-
tions here in the 1960s-70s, yielded certain
key fi nds and pieces of evidence leading
to an interesting debate surrounding poten-
tial whale hunting at this site, a site located
well beyond the location of other archae-
ologically known areas for indigenous
whaling.”
Setting aside the amusing coinci-
dence that a Seaside archaeological
site is called “Par-Tee,” Krantz
On this
haunted coast
where ancient
civilizations fell to
European germs,
the savage waves
alone record
heroic annals
of bravery.
goes on to say, “The most compelling piece
of evidence from the site, dubbed ‘a smok-
ing gun’ by those enthusiastic about the
idea that whaling was practiced in Ore-
gon, is a humpback whale phalange deeply
embedded with an elk bone point.” Analy-
sis found the artifact dates between AD 650
and 950.
Tales of courage
It is a heart-gripping idea to imagine tak-
ing to sea in small boats to hunt the largest
creatures on the planet. Gentle they are, but
not after being poked with a sharp object.
This is of more than academic interest to me.
Whaling is an old family occupation for
many New Englanders and old Northwest-
erners. John Webbe-Evered of Massachu-
setts Bay, my 12xgreat-grandfather, “pursu-
ing a Whale, was caught in ye rope, twisted
about his middle, & being drawn into ye sea,
was drowned” in 1668. He should have stuck
with his previous prey. In 1642, he was “an
active man, with his company … gone with
commission from the Bay to get seahorse
(walrus ) teeth and oyle” on the Isle of Sable
190 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
He is at least remembered. On this
haunted coast where ancient civilizations
fell to European germs, the savage waves
alone record heroic annals of bravery.
Or maybe the whales remember, too, and
have returned to the Columbia’s sheltered
waters to forgive us our trespasses.
— M.S.W.
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal.
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