While “human ancestors were still jumping around in trees,” there was the “magic of whales, that they had expressed loyalty, grief, gratitude and had called each other by name long before we were even a seed of an apple in God’s eye. And they had done it all for millions of years and had swum the oceans in peace.”
That is part of the gospel of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a more radical splinter group of Greenpeace, dedicated to making sure that this hymn of praise does not turn into an elegy before a few more years have passed. If you are at all in sympathy with them (as — reviewer’s disclosure — I am), you will read “The Whale Warriors,” Peter Heller’s account of this 2005 Christmastime foray into the waters of the South Pole, with a fierce partisanship. And even if you are not, be warned, the longer you read, the more you will be convinced.
Heller, an award-winning Denver adventure writer and contributor to National Public Radio, Outside magazine and National Geographic Adventure, does not hesitate to share his ambivalence about the paradox of the Sea Shepherd movement. Its leader, Paul Watson, “gentle Like a polar bear,” and an original, though now estranged, founder of Greenpeace, has looked into the eye of a dying whale he was trying to save, and “saw recognition.”
In consequence, he has established a formidable 30-year record against what he considers pirate fishing, including capturing sea- bottom trawling nets, ramming hunter vessels and sinking eight whaling ships, amazingly without hurting anyone in the process.
Heller and his readers cannot avoid reflecting on the enigma of this powerful man, motivated by one of the finest instincts of humankind, who yet finds no problem in enforcing that respect for life by putting many human lives in danger.
Wisely, Heller puts the moral problem on hold and joins Watson in yet another of his seemingly quixotic missions. A Japanese expedition is taking endangered whales out of an internationally established Antarctic whale sanctuary. This is done as “scientific whaling,” a “bogus science” that offers some legal cover for killing hundreds of whales under the pretense that they must be studied so they can be saved. Then the meat is sold in the dwindling Japanese marketplace, where one endangered fin whale may bring in $1 million.
At Watson’s invitation, Heller becomes one of a 43-member volunteer crew for a two-month stint aboard the Farley Mowatt, the all- black 200-ton scourge of every illegal fishing vessel in the Antarctic. Many of these vessels use systematic spare-none fishing methods that leave very little alive of any species in vulnerable areas, but it is the whales, along with their harsh, haunting habitat, that hijack the story.
In spite of himself, Heller cannot get over the wonder of whales, their physical presence, their nature (“a wild distillation of goodwill”) and the Antarctic immediacy of both inhumanly wild weather and morning light over “a sea of silk and glass.”
The byplay of Greenpeace relationships, the whale-killers’ frustration and the occasional Three Stooges quality of the life and preparations aboard ship all receive their due, but the reader will close this book with an indefinable yearning for a happy ending that does not happen.
Watson and his colorful crew of “dangerous vegans” do exact some toll on the human killers, though this reader wished there could be more, within humane legal limits, of course. But the killing continues, and, together with global warming, the depredations of unthinking humankind seem likely to wipe out many of the planet’s unearthly enchantments.
Not if Watson can stop them, though. Thanks to Heller’s thoughtful treatment, surely most readers will join me in fervent hope that this embattled captain can continue to walk his fine line of protest and prevention until the world comes around to some worthwhile, workable version of his thinking.
Maude McDaniel, a freelance writer from Cumberland, Md., has written book reviews for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Journal, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Bookpage and many other publications.
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NONFICTION
The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals, by Peter Heller, $25
