English French German Spain Italian Dutch Russian Portuguese Japanese Korean Arabic Chinese Simplified

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Whale Songs

Continuing the phoktober theme...

Last week I promised I'd try to get some whale shots... They're not brilliant and now the shopping list has been lengthened to include a powerful zoom lens...

Each year, from June to November, the southern right whale comes to our shores. In the protected bays along the southern coast hundreds of whales mate and calve. Given the amount of splashing, bellowing and heavy breathing that was going on when I took these shots I think we can take a pretty educated guess that there was some rumpy pumpy taking place..

Significant Other has always said I call the whales and this time I believed him. We have never seen the whales come this close to the rocky shoreline before.

What I find so utterly tragic is that people are willing to hunt these magnificent animals - invariably using grenade-tipped harpoons which explode inside the animals. Increasingly the ban on whale hunting, which has been in force for 20 years, is coming under pressure with 33 nations supporting whale hunting and only 32 against it. However, in June this year the International Whaling Commission upheld an indefinite moratorium on commercial whaling by IWC members that had been in effect since 1986. Despite this, the decision will have no practical effect on the whale hunting now conducted by Japan, Norway, Iceland, and certain other countries. For more information on this, please see here and, for an excellent article on the subject of whale hunting go here.



I reach out

and you touch me

with my heart in yours









I call

and you answer me

with your soul

this is whale speak

and I know











Song of joy

my heart to yours

as you play

rolling in the waves






To listen to the sounds of whales, go here, and to read more about the southern right whale, go here.

No comments:

Post a Comment