A Whale's Last Song

credit:  Darryl Dyck, The Canadian Press

A juvenile humpback whale washed up onto the beach a couple kilometres from our house this morning. By the time my girls and I arrived a few hours later the beach was swarming with a crowd of the curious. Yellow police tape circled the 10-metre long whale, making it look like a crime scene, which I suppose it was -- the fishing net tangled at the whale’s fluke clearly indicated foul play. The Vancouver Aquarium folks were on hand as were the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It was a strange atmosphere of mourning and festivity. I heard one man say to his son, “Isn’t this exciting?” I think he meant being so close to a whale.

There are only about 2,000 humpbacks that travel up and down the B.C. coast. They don’t often come near shore. They do sing, however -- haunting songs. And they’re intelligent. I thought of a story related by a marine biologist about another species of whale -- Orcas. Each of the three Orca pods that live in the Northwest’s Puget Sound sing in their own distinct dialect. When one pod failed to return one particular spring the other two pods went out to sea, singing the third pod’s song in an attempt to woo it back to their common summer waters.

And I thought of my grandparents’ neighbours on Orcas Island who once ate a Robin that had smashed into their windshield. Not wanting its death to have been in vain they collected it off the road, brought it home and cooked it for lunch. I remembered how our financial advisor trapped, killed and made stew of a squirrel who had taken up residence in his garage. He encouraged his kids to eat the stew as a living case study of “waste not, want not” (you got to love such conservatism in a financial advisor).

But how could we redeem this whale’s death? We couldn’t eat it. We couldn’t use its blubber for oil. We could, however, lament. Before the crime scene tape went up some thoughtful souls placed flowers on its head. And just before we arrived three elders from the Semiamhoo First Nation beat drums and sang songs, honouring a rare and singing whale.

Poverty and Conservation -- Making the Connection

Students in Ghana planting trees with A Rocha's Climate Stewards project

If ecology is the study of connections, then the ecologists should be the first to rally against the injustices of environmental degradation and the subsequent human suffering that accompanies it. The reason why many don’t, as Peter Harris points out, is that we live in a time of complete disconnection. He writes, “products conceal their origins, academic disciplines operate in expert solitude, social relationships fragment.” But the poor do not have the luxury of disconnection from their environment. There are no presto logs to burn when their forests are decimated, no stashes of bottled water when the spring runs dry, no fertile fields around the bend when their crops sizzle during a prolonged drought. Stella Simiyu, a native Kenyan and a Senior Research Scientist in plant conservation at the National Museums of Kenya, writes this about the predicament of the poor.

If you look at Africa, the rural poor depend directly on the natural resource base. This is where their pharmacy, supermarket, power company and water company are. What would happen to you if these things were removed from your local neighbourhood? We must invest in environmental conservation because this is how we enhance the ability of the rural poor to have options and provide for them ways of getting out of the poverty trap.

It is only too easy to live in happy naivete when it comes to the social and environmental costs associated with our extravagant Western lifestyles. What we need are some clarion voices to draw those connections for us. Enter the words of Hosea.

Hear the word of the Lord…There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery…Because of this the land mourns…the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying. (Hosea 4:1–3)