A tragic story of humans and whales?

I am Zhuo Yan, and we are lifelong learning together, day 103.

Today we're going to talk about the whales. In our minds, whales are rare creatures that many people never see once in their lives. Moreover, we live on land, and they live in distant seas, which seem to have little intersection with us humans.

But the truth is that the development of technology has given humans the confidence to rule the earth, but the desire released by this self-confidence has driven the whales to extinction. The following set of data is shocking, in the 17th century, the number of eight large whale species in the world was as high as 4.5 million, and this number has fallen off a cliff with the pace of human modernization. By 2004, no more than 350,000 whales had survived, and many species, such as the world's largest species, the blue whale, had fewer than 1,000 left before the International Whaling Commission banned whaling.

The biggest motivation for such killings is naturally driven by commercialization.

Since the industrialization of human beings, a large number of whales have been stripped of baleam, cut off baleen and thrown back into the sea. Because the oil extracted from the blubber can be used for lighting, as well as to make soap, leather and cosmetics, and the whale's whiskers, which are used to filter food in the mouth of the whale and are flexible and not easy to break, are made into utensils or ornaments, that is, luxuries such as ivory and rhino horn, and some baleen are made into women's skirts, collars, umbrella bones, and so on.

It is conceivable that humans will declare war on whales in order to reap huge profits, but the drive for profit is far from all. Today we're going to listen to a true story told by Canadian writer Farley Moart in his "Death of the Whale", about the tragic story of a pregnant female whale trapped in the bay and ruthlessly shot by humans, reflecting on the reasons beyond the drive for profit.

The story also begins with a family of fin whales.

One winter in the 1970s, in the waters of Canada's Burgio Islands, a family of five fin whales went out to forage for food. In this bay, there are a lot of herring that they like to eat.

The man in charge of the little house was a shiny-skinned, large whale, and his mate was even older than him, rounded and looked several months pregnant. They also have three children. The three young whales were strong and curious about the world around them.

After a full meal, a family of five leisurely wandered around the seabed. But the mother whale felt that she was not full, because she still had a small whale in her womb. Usually, whales rely on the reflective aperture in their abdomen to drive their herring to eat, but now that night has fallen, this method has not worked. But that's okay, the mother whale can also use a sonar system to determine the location, density, and depth of the fish swarm.

Now she detected a dense school of herring and rushed toward them without hesitation. Since the night deprived her of her ability to reflect the aperture, the best option was to prey on schools of fish that were surrounded by natural barriers, so that when she approached, the fish could not escape, equivalent to falling into a natural fishing net.

So the mother whale decided to herd the fish into a small trench where she could easily hunt. But the whale's sonar system also had limitations, and she couldn't perceive that the trench was narrow and shallow. Just when she noticed that the water level had suddenly become shallow and the situation was not good, she could not stop the car and was carried into this dangerous trench by the inertia of the current. By this time, her stomach had touched the rock at the bottom of the trench, and fear struck, and she frantically tried to turn around, but was pushed by the tide and sank deeper and deeper in the trench. She was frightened, and the narrow trench trapped her. The scariest thing is that when the tide recedes, she runs the risk of running aground.

The word stranded may be unfamiliar to us, but for whales, it's doomed to death. Without the support of the buoyancy of the sea, her huge body would turn into a murder weapon that killed herself, and the huge weight would crush the whale's ribs and eventually suffocate to death.

So the female whale swam forward desperately, her body rubbing against the rocks and she didn't care. Finally, she swam out of the bottom of the ditch, the water became deeper, and she was free again! But she did not expect that what greeted her was a trap, a bay in which she had no way out, and the only exit was the dangerous trench she had just come from.

But the tide receded and the mother whale was trapped in the bay, waiting for at least a month until the next high tide.

During this time, she may not have food, because herring does not actively swim into the bay with a giant whale. But the good news is that the male whale, the husband of the mother whale, has been guarding the outside of the trench with three children and regularly driving herring in for the mother whale to eat. If the mother whale can safely survive the next high tide, then she can be reunited with her family.

In the days that followed, it was observed that although the two whales were half a mile apart and could not see each other, they would actually spew at the same time, make sounds at the same time, and never give up, which was simply a model for husband and wife.

In fact, fin whales exist in the form of a family organization similar to ours. The small home of fin whales is also generally made up of a fin whale couple and their children.

It is worth mentioning that fin whales are not only monogamous, but this relationship will last for life. The relationship between the fin whale couple is very close, more dedicated than most humans, and when one of the couples is killed, the remaining one will stay with him until death.

So when a fin whale appears alone, it means that his family may have already suffered an accident. The observed fin whales are called "loners" who occasionally appear with other whale families, but most of the time they stay alone and do not start new families.

Well, let's get back to this story. Just when the people of Burgio discovered that there was a giant whale, that is, the mother whale was trapped in the bay, many good people put guns and ammunition on their backs to find out.

Perhaps for these people, conquering such a behemoth can bring a sense of accomplishment to their boring lives, or prove their courage. But whatever the reason, the men were excitedly shooting at the mother whale, aiming at her eyes and vents, trying to kill her.

Forced to be helpless, the mother whale had to dive to the bottom of the sea to hide. But that's only a stopgap measure. Although whales have evolved to survive in the deep sea for long periods of time and can store oxygen in the red blood cells and muscle tissue of the blood, they, as mammals, need to replenish oxygen in time to survive.

Therefore, after a long dive, the whale must surface to spit out the exhaust gas and then inhale a lot of fresh air. Their air vents are actually nostrils, which have valves and a long pipe connected to the lungs, which can transport a large amount of oxygen. In order to get enough oxygen, every time the fin whale breathes, it will dive into the water, every two or three minutes, and then float up and squirt until the lungs are filled with oxygen, and then continue to dive into the deep sea.

However, when the pleasure-seekers discovered the mother whale's breathing pattern, they seized the moment when she floated up and instantly opened fire on her vent. Allegedly, it was as lively as a festival, with more and more boats coming to join the shooter, and more people standing on the shore, dressed in their best clothes, as if watching a rare show, staring excitedly at the panicked whale.

At the time of the story, the author and his wife lived in Burgio. He was very anxious after hearing about the trapped female whale and the carnival of killing, and began to look for all possible ways to stop the murder.

Before that, an episode occurred.

In order to find out if she was really a whale, the author sailed into the bay with his wife in a boat. According to the author's wife, "Her fins were as long as a small flat-bottomed fishing boat, which looked green in the water under the boat; then her long, huge body paddled across the bottom of the boat, only the dorsal fin crossed the water to form shallow ripples." We couldn't believe our eyes, such a behemoth, probably 80 tons, was under our boat, like salmon, and so leisurely. ”

Not only that, but the whale will deliberately avoid the anchor and avoid overturning the boat.

Speaking of which, you may have the same doubts as I do. Why didn't the mother whale take revenge after experiencing the cruel human injuries to her? After all, with her size, a random wave can tear up their boat, just as easy as a human crushing an egg.

The author does not come up with a definitive answer to this question in the book, because we still know too little about whales and can only guess from a large number of examples: most whales are neither aggressive nor fierce in their personalities — they are naturally gentle creatures.

In the end, the author spent a lot of effort to contact the Canadian Information Agency and even the governor of Newfoundland, and achieved some results. The shooting of the mother whale was banned by government. Moreover, the news that the mother whale was trapped caused a national sensation, which also confirmed the author's idea that the living whale is worth more than the dead whale, which not only has scientific research value, but also tourism value.

At this point in the story, we may be relieved. The situation did not look bad, people stopped shooting, and the author and his friends began to protect her and send her her herring. The male whale outside the trench was also relieved, and until the end they were still communicating frequently, comforting each other with frequencies that humans could not recognize, that is, the language that belonged to whales.

But the final outcome was sad, and the mother whale still died of wound infection after many days of perseverance. When she died, she was so ill that she had no strength to surface and eventually drowned in the deep sea. It's like a drowning man, sinking alone to the bottom of the sea.

We may wonder if those who are having fun will shoot bullets into the skin of the mother whale and kill her, for what benefit? This is not the case.

According to the author's wife, "There were no farms nearby that kept mink or foxes and needed to be fed with whale meat; no one wanted to eat her meat. Moreover, they did not want to possess her baleshi or baleen. In the end, she concluded: "There is absolutely no motive for food or interest, just a simple massacre." ”

But this is not an isolated case, and in other chapters the author mentions his experience of witnessing twenty-three large whales die at the hands of pleasure seekers.

Not only that, but whale slaughter has even been rendered as part of courage in culture. As a famous example, Herman Melville, the greatest American novelist of the 19th century, has a classic work called "Moby Dick", which tells the story of a captain of a whaling ship who embarks on a heroic journey to kill a moby whale. While the book has countless different interpretations, one thing is certain: the captain saw the conquest of beluga whales as a symbol of courage, a human desire to conquer nature, or to defeat powerful enemies.

Moby Dick's success not only reflected the social consensus of the time, but also influenced generations of North Americans — did you know that the name of Starbucks, the world's largest coffee retailer today, comes from the name of the vice captain in Moby Dick. And the author's pregnant female whale was also named Moby Joey with the whale Moby Dick in "Moby Dick", which shows its influence.

In the story of the pregnant female whale, the author expresses a central point, that is, the development and progress of human technology has caused some people to lose their reverence for nature and begin to ignore other lives — people who kill whales just for fun.

The different choices of our human beings will have a major impact on ourselves and on the ecology: the choices that were once made affect the current ecosystem, and the choices made now will determine the future of human beings and all life on earth. Today's status quo raises a question: how should humanity use technology rationally in the future, and how can we manage the expansion of superiority and self-confidence brought about by technological progress, and coexist in harmony with other life on Earth?

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Reference Resources: Get the Listening Book : "The Death of the Whale"