A Word About Whales ...

No, no whales at the wetlands, but here is a distressing bit of news, and it's something that I need to share. I imagine that, like me, you believed the moratorium on commercial whaling was effectively protecting the world's whale populations from being decimated for profit.

Turns out the opposite is true—the number of whales being commercially hunted has actually gone up since 1986, not down. This has led to the concept of an "arrangement" that would allow some commercial whale hunting, since the moratorium doesn't appear to be working.

A good idea, or a really bad compromise? Would the three countries that simply refuse to acknowledge the moratorium even respect the notion of quotas? Call me cynical, but I think that would be highly unlikely. Where there's money to be made ...

Anyway, check out the Time article and see what you think. Either way, it seems to me that the whales will still be the losers in this latest "war."

Maybe the best way to end this post is with the words of Joanna Macy, from her Bestiary:

Dive me deep, brother whale, in this time we have left. Deep in our mother ocean where once I swam, gilled and finned. The salt from those early seas still runs in my tears. Tears are too meagre now. Give me a song ... a song for a sadness too vast for my heart, for a rage too wild for my throat.