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Have the humpbacks forgiven us our trespasses? | Columns

Whales pirouetting like Winnebago-sized trout from Columbia make some of my friends think of Moses and the plagues of Egypt: can locust storms and frog floods be a long time ago? You have to flee from a devastated ocean …

For most of us, however, the last two humpback whale summers have been auspicious omen, a sign that our river is clean and plentiful enough to feed friendly Leviathans. And if they can stand to be so close to us, maybe we are not so terrible after all.

If there weren’t any humpback whales, our ancient storytellers would have made them up. Huge creatures with grooves in their huge esophagus to slide swiftly through the sea and sing ethereal songs of freedom that echo endlessly through the black canyons of the unfathomable depth – they are the stuff of the wildest imagination.

Not all whales are that charismatic. I’m being condemned as some kind of heartless heretic, but gray whales seem boring to me, like dairy cows. We once took our daughter in a zodiac to visit some off the coast of Nayarit, mothers and calves fattening in warm Mexican waters before migrating north. Perhaps a season later they were swimming on the black basalt headlands here where I am walking the dog. There is a little spark of curiosity, at least with cattle in a field – they will stumble around like silly toddlers hoping for a magic trick. But the gray whales only breathed in and out, their salty fumes like the exhaust fumes of a sleepy sea cave where enchanted sailors never wake.

Humpback whales now, what a swing! Based on amateur videos over the past few weeks, you can imagine them giggling like underwater schoolgirls before shooting into the air right next to or behind a stunned Buoy 10 fisherman. Conceited scientists always warn us against inflicting human-like emotions on wild animals, but what can this be but pure joy of life? I’ve always wanted to be reborn as an otter, but the humpback whales are making me rethink.

The Northeast Pacific is a bit of a mess, with a hangover that still makes the infamous “Blob” warmer at depth than it should be. Last year, I and others wondered if ocean conditions could have exposed the nutritious little anchovies, herrings, and other fish that are a constant feast for humpback whales, chinook salmon, and species approaching the top of the food pyramid. And it is conceivable that this situation actually pushed humpback whales into the river.

Here’s a more optimistic speculation: What if humpback whales used the vast and usually quite salty Columbia Estuary as a habitat in the past, but have only now recovered to some sort of normal population? Could it be, I wonder, that the humpback whales we see now are sturdy pioneers rediscovering a popular old hunting ground that was last used by their great-great-grandparents in the period before rampant whaling took them over in the 19th century Edge of extinction? Perhaps humpback whales are quite normal here in the long term.

Yankee whalers wreaked havoc on Pacific marine mammals, clearing pocket after pocket of whales, seals and otters. The effects multiplied after the large whaling areas on the northwest coast were discovered in 1838, according to “A History of the American Whale Fishery” (1907) by Walter Sheldon Tower. When the extremely lucrative whaling in the Arctic began in 1848, whalers began to settle on this side of the continent, mainly from California. With the arrival of the railways after the Civil War, San Francisco effectively became the country’s whaling capital, as whale oil could be landed there from the far north and then quickly shipped by rail to the east.

(As an aside, the presence of whaling ships from the north led to the Pacific coast’s only nautical involvement in the civil war when the CSS Shenandoah crossed into high arctic waters and captured many whalers . and June 28, 1865 fired the last shots of the war in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska.)

Smaller operations continued into the 20th century, including the American Pacific Whaling Co., which wintered in Meydenbauer Bay on Lake Washington, now part of Bellevue.

Bioproducts Inc. from Oregon fished whales locally in Warrenton and harvested around 13 whales – including two humpback whales – between 1960 and 1965. The meat was sold to feed chickens and mink on fur farms. For reasons no longer readily apparent, NASA had some use for the oil in the Mercury space program, but most of it was sold to the mountain. Hood Soap Co.

One attendee’s son recalled that ground whale meat tasted just like hamburgers.

British Columbia whaling declined over the same period, but in 1959 it was still 369 fin whales, 259 sperm whales, 185 sei, 28 blue and 27 humpback whales – a total of 868.

All of this suggests to me that any whale would have been a fool to get close to humans for an awful long time. Fortunately for us, they never launched an effective counterattack.

On the west coast of the United States, the Makah tribe at the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula are best known for a whaling tradition that they have sought to revive as an essential feature of their culture in recent years.

Here at the Columbia Estuary, whaling has been remembered less orally. Charles Cultee of the Bay Center, Washington, one of the last surviving native speakers of the Chinook language, told the ethnologist Franz Boas about whaling traditions in 1890. But they seem to primarily catch whales that have been stranded on beaches or washed ashore fresh enough to be caught.

Among the Clatsop tribe on the south side of the river, for example, Cultee reported that it was a routine practice to always carry knives, straps, and mats in order to be ready in case a whale became available – what on it suggests this happened quite often. A large piece of whale meat was good enough to trade for a blanket.

Unfortunately, it is easy to imagine that the local Indian population was so decimated that local whale hunting practices were forgotten before anyone sought their memories.

In a 2014 article for the University of Washington, Kayla Krantz wrote, “The Par-Tee archaeological site in Seaside, Oregon, during excavations here in the 1960s and 1970s, uncovered certain key finds and pieces of evidence that make one interesting debate about the potential for whale hunting at this location, a place that is far beyond the sites of other archaeologically known areas for local whaling. “

Aside from the amusing coincidence that an archaeological site by the sea is called “Par-Tee”, Krantz continues: “The most compelling piece of evidence on this site, which those who are enthusiastic about the idea of ​​whaling call ‘a smoking weapon’ practiced in Oregon, is a humpback whale phalanx embedded deep in the tip of a moose bone. ”The analysis revealed the artifact dates between AD 650 and 950.

It’s a heartbreaking idea to imagine going to sea in small boats to hunt down the world’s largest creatures. They are gentle, but not after being stabbed with a sharp object. For me this is more than just scientifically interesting.

Whaling is an old family pastime for many New Englanders and old Northwesters. Massachusetts Bay’s John Webbe-Evered, my 12-time great-grandfather, “had” chased a whale in 1668, was caught in your rope, twisted about its middle and dragged into the sea and drowned “in 1668. He would have stayed with his previous prey should . In 1642 he was “an active man, with his business … in charge of the Bay to get seahorse (walrus) teeth and oyle” on the Isle of Sable 190 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

At least he is remembered. On this ghostly coast, where ancient civilizations fell victim to European germs, the wild waves alone write heroic annals of valor.

Or maybe the whales remember this too and have returned to the protected waters of Columbia to forgive us for our transgressions.

Matt Winters is the editor and editor of the Chinook Observer and Coast River Business Journal.

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