You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by kerrianne
The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare
4.0
This book took me what felt like ages to read (because it made me so sad). I've loved all kinds of whales since I was a little girl, and have always been drawn to stories about them. I took a course in college that was entirely focused on Melville and the whale. So while I already knew a lot of the information and back-story provided in the introductory chapters on whaling, and Melville, and Moby-Dick, I was committed to following this book to its watery end. And so I kept coming back to it, eager to finish, but also entirely disheartened by the overall truth inherent in it: Whales are magic and we are monsters.
Humans across all continents have actively, willingly destroyed (nearly to the brink of ultimate, interspecies extinction) one of the most fascinating, evolved, and majestic creatures on this planet. We as a species are still actively, willingly hunting, killing, and decimating their already fragile populations—populations still valiantly trying to replenish themselves after humans killed hundreds of thousands of whales just in the last 50 years.
As much as I'd love to believe whaling is long-discarded barbaric behavior of the very distant past, that just isn't true. In the 1950s ships were documented as taking 30,000 whales in one season, with sometimes up to twenty-four whales killed a day. Russian and Japanese whaling vessels killed a quarter of a million sperm whales from 1964-1974. In 1965 alone 72,471 sperm whales were killed. The Azores didn't outlaw whaling until 1986. Norway, Iceland, and Japan area all STILL openly hunting and killing whales. The ocean being far too big a place to consistently police and whales being far too helpless against today's technology and harpooning tools, there are likely countries and organizations secretly engaged in illegal whaling operations in every ocean across the globe.
My mind can hardly wrap itself around how the oceans might look had we not sought to annihilate the whale (and myriad other species of marine mammal, cephalopod, fish, and water fowl alongside it).
One study (published in 2015) estimates humans are directly responsible for over three million whale deaths throughout the past century. THREE. MILLION. WHALES. Killed for their oil, their blubber, their spermaceti, their ambergis, their meat, for sport, and ultimately and most pervasively—for greed. Whales were big business, and in places like Japan and Norway they still are big business. I have little doubt that if whales were a naturally replenishing resource, an endless source of life and energy, humans would still be whaling in every country. Most whales stopped being hunted not because it was morally bankrupt behavior, but because there stopped being enough of them to make it lucrative. Whales became harder to find, and thus more expensive to hunt.
I could talk about whales and what our collective decimation of their populations means to humans as a supposed "evolved" species for days. Weeks. Years, probably.
But because this is Goodreads and not my personal whale blog I'm instead going to say that this book is a history of whaling more than it is anything else, and while I think it's a worthwhile read for that history alone, if you love whales or any manner of marine life, be prepared to be angry and sad while you read it. Be prepared, too, for learning (or being reminded anew) how utterly phenomenal whales really are.
[Four stars for such a deep dive into the heart of my favorite oceanic creature + one of my all-time favorite books, and for these resilient, sentient, stunning mammals that will forever be more amazing than any of us on land.]
Humans across all continents have actively, willingly destroyed (nearly to the brink of ultimate, interspecies extinction) one of the most fascinating, evolved, and majestic creatures on this planet. We as a species are still actively, willingly hunting, killing, and decimating their already fragile populations—populations still valiantly trying to replenish themselves after humans killed hundreds of thousands of whales just in the last 50 years.
As much as I'd love to believe whaling is long-discarded barbaric behavior of the very distant past, that just isn't true. In the 1950s ships were documented as taking 30,000 whales in one season, with sometimes up to twenty-four whales killed a day. Russian and Japanese whaling vessels killed a quarter of a million sperm whales from 1964-1974. In 1965 alone 72,471 sperm whales were killed. The Azores didn't outlaw whaling until 1986. Norway, Iceland, and Japan area all STILL openly hunting and killing whales. The ocean being far too big a place to consistently police and whales being far too helpless against today's technology and harpooning tools, there are likely countries and organizations secretly engaged in illegal whaling operations in every ocean across the globe.
My mind can hardly wrap itself around how the oceans might look had we not sought to annihilate the whale (and myriad other species of marine mammal, cephalopod, fish, and water fowl alongside it).
One study (published in 2015) estimates humans are directly responsible for over three million whale deaths throughout the past century. THREE. MILLION. WHALES. Killed for their oil, their blubber, their spermaceti, their ambergis, their meat, for sport, and ultimately and most pervasively—for greed. Whales were big business, and in places like Japan and Norway they still are big business. I have little doubt that if whales were a naturally replenishing resource, an endless source of life and energy, humans would still be whaling in every country. Most whales stopped being hunted not because it was morally bankrupt behavior, but because there stopped being enough of them to make it lucrative. Whales became harder to find, and thus more expensive to hunt.
I could talk about whales and what our collective decimation of their populations means to humans as a supposed "evolved" species for days. Weeks. Years, probably.
But because this is Goodreads and not my personal whale blog I'm instead going to say that this book is a history of whaling more than it is anything else, and while I think it's a worthwhile read for that history alone, if you love whales or any manner of marine life, be prepared to be angry and sad while you read it. Be prepared, too, for learning (or being reminded anew) how utterly phenomenal whales really are.
[Four stars for such a deep dive into the heart of my favorite oceanic creature + one of my all-time favorite books, and for these resilient, sentient, stunning mammals that will forever be more amazing than any of us on land.]