BLUBBERING FOOLS?

What is it about whales that makes people go to such lengths to save them, asks John Schauble, a writer for The Age newspaper where this article first appeared.

Many people wonder what drives whales to beach themselves on our shores each year. But am I alone in wondering what drives people to insist on pushing them back into the water?

It seems that every time a whale is found beaching itself on the Australian coast, volunteers intent on securing its salvation by shoving it back into the water appear as if by magic.

Why do stranded whales elicit this response? Certainly such scenes are tragic and the sight of suffering creatures traumatic. But perhaps the human reaction has more to do with a deeply borne guilt and modern cultural beliefs rather than ecological imperatives. I have a nagging feeling that people push whales back into the waves because it makes the pushers feel good. What the whales think – that is, if they are capable of reasoned thought – is anybody’s guess.

0nce beached, the whale is a helpless creature. Removed from water it can no longer move, its own weight may eventually crush its lungs. It will die without human intervention.

When the seven melon-headed whales beached themselves on the coast between Kempsey and Port Macquarie last Tuesday night, there was no shortage of would-be saviours. Rescuers attempted to send them back, but six beached themselves again. The seventh died as the result of stress during the release attempt.

The survivors were then loaded onto trucks and taken to the saltwater swimming pool of a local hotel in order to recover before a further release attempt. Images of the mammals, dabbed with zinc cream and carefully supported by wetsuit-clad volunteers, have since filled our newspapers and television screens. People, it seems, will happily go to all sorts of lengths to save a whale.

Some people seem certain, righteous, even zealous in intervening in such cases. I wish I shared their certainty. But we as humans are curiously selective in our responses to suffering.

It is difficult to imagine some other distressed species, with or without the media attention, eliciting a similar response. During the recent drought, there was no rush of people to the country to save sheep shot by farmers unable to feed them.

Pushing whales back into the water has become the “right” thing to do because for too long man has been doing the wrong thing by sticking harpoons in their backs and boiling them down into oil. Saving a beached whale has become not just acceptable; it is politically correct.

But is it the ecologically sound or even humane thing to do? Would not the effort and money expended on saving the stranded be better spent on learning more about the whale before we interfere in something we don’t properly understand? One must ask whether the rescuers, with the very best of intentions, are engaging in that most human failing of presuming to interfere in a natural phenomenon.

No one knows why whales beach themselves. There are several theories. One is that, because these creatures have strong herd or familial ties, when one gets into trouble, and sends out signals of distress, the other members of the pod will follow, even to their deaths. Another theory put forward by scientists a few years ago is that whales’ navigational abilities are affected by magnetic storms associated with sunspot activity. Whether beaching is done by accident or with intent, and to what degree human interference in whale ecology is important, are still open questions.

Less mysterious, perhaps, are the human responses. For thousands of years, man hunted whales for their blubber and bones, ambergris