Canadian writer Farley Moart (1921-2014) devoted his life to environmental protection, starting with his debut film "Deer People" (1952), including the masterpiece "Living with Wolves" (1963), which has won many awards and often aroused heated discussion. In 1981, Moart was awarded the National Order of Canada, Second Class, one of Canada's highest honors, in recognition of his outstanding contribution.
"The Death of the Whale" tells the story of Moart witnessing the death of a pregnant female whale. Moart desperately tried to save her, hoping to rekindle several times and extinguish it several times, and this fascinating and huge creature finally disappeared into the human world. A sad but not beautiful, poetic but cruel non-fiction work that awakens the conscience that still exists in the human heart. The book intersperses the destruction of whales caused by the developed whaling industry and industrial civilization in modern times, which is not an accidental event, but the common fate of a group.
Whale Death
Author: Farley Moart
Translator: Gao Jianguo, Li Yuntao
Edition: Guangxi Normal University Press
June 2021
The Death of the Whale, From the Crazy "Modernization"
It is not known when whaling began. According to the American writer Keith M. According to "Knowing the Sea", edited by A. Svedrup and Virginia Ambrast, the earliest whaling in Europe began in Norway around 800-1000 AD. Originally French and Spanish Basques were whalers in the Gulf of Biscay, and in the early 16th century, Basque whalers crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Canada. They set up multiple whaling sites along Labrador, processing the blubber from humpback and backless whales into whale oil, which was then transported back to Europe across the Atlantic Ocean. This laborious business is extremely lucrative.
In the era of no electricity, the illumination and use time of whale oil candles was much better than that of ordinary candles; whale baleens were composed of hundreds of elastic bone plates, which could be used as a skeleton to support corsets and skirts, which was very popular with aristocratic women; ambergris was a wax taken from the intestines of sperm whales, mixed with perfume to make deodorant, or as medicine; whale meat could lubricate wheels and could also be used to clean the body... The frenzied demand for whale products has prompted the development of the whaling industry, and whales disappear from place to place, species after species. By the late 19th century, whales in most of the sea had declined to the point of commercial extinction, that is, few enough to be worthless of commercial fishing.
The story of "Whale Death" takes place in the Burgio Islands of Canada in the early 1970s. Located on the coast ninety miles east of The Port of Oaks Basque Country, Burgio is a rugged and little-known coast, with scattered fishermen and sporadic sailors being the only human inhabitants. Where modernization swept through, distant places no longer existed, and no one could escape the curse of madness. "The Death of the Whale" describes the rapid industrialization process in the area, in order to facilitate the concentration of "labor resources", many scattered small communities were forcibly relocated, the government spent a lot of money to build a frozen fishery processing plant, and then "sold" to private individuals at absurd low prices, the settlement became a slum, living conditions were poor, the natural environment deteriorated, and people were full of complaints and dissatisfaction with reality.
This mentality is one of the reasons for the tragedy. The human heart is fragile and roughly tempered by hard work. When humans become numb and lose their empathy, a whale trapped in a bay will face endless malice. People tried to kill her, for profit, and they teased her in every way, grandstanded her, constantly expelled her, laughed loudly and made a big noise, used her as a target for shooting, the rich man drove the boat game, the poor became a spectator on the sidelines, and Moart's thin efforts to stop her had little effect, but was ridiculed.
How people treat animals is a presupposition and reference between people
Why do humans abuse animals? Why do humans kill each other, and the weak swing their swords at the weaker? Australian bioethicist Peter Singh once said that we must take the suffering of animals seriously, that human oppression of animals is species discrimination, and that people who ignore animals will also ignore unfortunate individuals in human communities (such as the disabled), bully the weak, and even commit genocide. The philosopher Agamben said that what cannot be witnessed and spoken of is what we really want to capture in the Auschwitz phenomenon, and how man treats animals is the presupposition and reference between people, a prerequisite for man to be human, and the relationship between man and animals, the world and the environment, marks the boundary of an important field.
The direct cause of the female whale's predicament was that she accidentally entered the narrow Aldridge Bay in order to chase herring. Why was she so careless? Because she was pregnant, she needed a lot of food, and the lack of food led to her adventures. While paying attention to the fate of whales, we should also pay attention to herring. This small fish is an important link in the marine biological chain, and the disappearance of herring will pose a threat of starvation for other fish. Humans have used high-gloss purse seine boats to greatly improve efficiency, and these herring are rarely used for food, mainly made into valuable fishmeal, and marine life is facing extinction.
The ferocious exploitation of human beings is the most fundamental cause of the crisis of marine life. British conservationist Karum Roberts warns in "If the Oceans Are Empty" that attention must be paid to the dangers of bottom trawling: it uproots all the seabed organisms, a destructive and wasteful bad way to jeopardize the future. Human herring boats have been fishing non-stop, and whales only need to meet their own food intake of fish, in terms of sustainable development, people have to learn from whales.
There are many places where humans learn from whales. The heart-wrenching aspect of "The Death of the Whale" is also the gentleness and tranquility shown by the whale. Trapped in the bay at the same time as the female, there was a fishing boat at the time, and the female gave way and the fishing boat was able to get out of the predicament, but the news spread and attracted a disgruntled crowd. Until her death, the female whale never tried to attack humans, although with her strength she could overturn at least a few small boats, and she only tried to avoid, and she could instinctively distinguish between the very few people like Moart who treated her well and to be close to him and accept his approach. It was a fin whale, she belonged to a community of five whales, after she was trapped, her friends accompanied her across the bay, the habit of the fin whale is monogamous, there is a whale always stay at the mouth of the bay, with the female whale spraying water, making whale sounds, as if silently guarding her, encouraging her.
Those things that persist in mature organisms
Whale Death has been hailed as a non-fiction version of Moby Dick. Both works are excellent in writing and similar in themes, both write about the author's understanding of whales and marine ecology, and convey the author's philosophy on the ocean.
Melville said that whales are even supreme, because they were creatures that existed before the Great Flood, as if they had some kind of ancient divinity, and he carefully described the details of dissecting whales to show the unbridled blasphemy of mankind. Melville used the mouth of Semali to conduct metaphysical thinking, to engage in "materialized" discussions, to explore the secrets of God's "descent" into nature. "What persists in mature organisms must be present in the germ. The continuity is not in the future, but in the past; the afterlife is eternal because it has passed; and although a solid new monument is built today, it will stand forever only when the bricks that built it are as old as the sun. Ishmael realized the true power of the sea, no matter how much humanity flaunts progress, no matter how technological development is in the future, even when the world is old and the world is destroyed, the ocean has the ability to damage and punish mankind.
Human beings are not aliens of the sea, and human beings are also the descendants of the sea. Almost all ethnic groups have similar legends: human beings originate from water, and the human soul is a wisp of air. It is scientifically proven that the most important component of the human body is water. Moart also wrote many scientific arguments in the book that the slightly better evolved whale brains are comparable or even better in terms of complexity and ability levels than our human brains. Whales and humans, Moart writes, separated from a common ancestor, one became the noblest form of life in the ocean, and the other became an animal on land that could control everything. When they re-encounter, humans engage in a one-sided battle, while whales struggle to the death. The history of whale extinction in the book is shocking.
Moart's writing and tireless efforts were a trend in the environmental movement that emerged since the 1960s. In the later part of "The Death of the Whale", we see the intervention of the forces of public opinion. Moart said that the whale can be used as a gimmick for tourism promotion, he tried to mobilize the enthusiasm of the locals with a profit strategy, and the netting to the news media finally attracted public attention and the government's authorized action, although these measures failed to save the female whale, we finally saw a meager hope.
Hope remains elusive, and in the book, Moat's efforts are often seen as ridiculous, unsophisticated, antics, but it was the tireless efforts of individuals such as Rachel Carson and Farley Moet that fueled the rise of the environmental movement in the mid-20th century and finally converged into a torrent. In 1972, the United Nations General Assembly on the Human Environment called for an end to commercial whaling. In the 1980s, the International Whaling Commission reached a universally agreed ban on whaling (japan, Norway and Iceland did not participate), and whale populations are slowly recovering. However, whales still face many dangers, with large numbers of whales dying from dumped garbage or poisoned by pollutants, and the situation of all marine life remains dangerous until the marine ecology is comprehensively improved.
In "The Whale's Death", the fin whale named "Moby Joey" sinks into the depths of the ocean and returns to the mysterious center. In Moby Dick, in the twilight, the sperm whale turns over to face the sun as it dies until it dies. We live and live in this world, we will also fall into trouble, we will also encounter disasters, what is our destiny? Is there a sun guiding the ascension of the soul?
The author | Lin Yi
Editor | Zhang Jin
Proofreading | dangerous