Snowjobbing -Science and the Whale

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 50

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

This country leads the world in the highest number of whale beachings every year. It is primarily a geographical problem related to the prevalence of sand spits and rapidly changing tide systems which these large mammals, skilled as they are in manoeuvring around these islands, are apt to misjudge. Then a youngster might get into trouble and the pod, moving in to help can get entrapped in turn. This appears to have led to the tragic loss of an entire Orca family down at Blue Cliffs Beach Southland near the western border of the Fiordland National Park in February. 

Orca stranding - Blue Cliffs Beach (Courtesy DoC)

The public response to these beachings cannot be faulted – it’s all hands to the pumps as entire communities turn out to assist in the refloat. 

 

The Kapiti Coast attracts occasional beachings though not usually of entire schools. A youngish sperm whale in January 2013 seemed to have either died close to the shore or deliberately beached itself, and then died. This very large animal attracted a large, dismayed crowd. 

Sperm whale beached near Kapiti Boat Club. 

Our latest beaching (Oct 29) is an endangered humpback. This animal had been dead for some time but a controversy has arisen over the explanation for its demise given by the  marine scientists who examined it. Bianca Begovich, who is a scientist and one of our most effective  environmental advocates, lives close to where the beaching occurred. She conducted her own scene examination and disputed the scientist’s professed puzzlement over the cause of death. 

Humpback whale Kapiti Oct 29  -courtesy TVNZ - Christie Osbourne

Here is what she had to say in a letter to a local paper (Kapiti Observer November 6) “…I was interested to read (KO Oct 30) “that the cause of the whale’s death was unknown.”…while I respect scientists (I trained as one myself) and I am sure she knows what she is doing, I had a good look at the animal on the seaward side and I am wondering if the huge propeller-shaped gash just under the whale’s right hand flipper had anything to do with it."

 

Marine mammal scientist Nadine Bott gave a spirited  account of the plight of the humpback whale and its precarious return to these waters after the catastrophe of  19^th and 20^th Century whaling. She surely must have been aware however, of the injury and its likely cause, for ship’s propeller injuries appear to be reasonably easily spotted, even in one that survives such an encounter. (See The New Yorker Sept 29 2014 - This article on whale watching contains the wonderful sentence that sits just the right side of pantomime  -Everybody cried out with a transported, almost religious sound.)  

A darker reason for Ms Bott’s coyness may have been identified by the NZ Herald columnist Dita De Boni, the very next week. She wrote a story on the Government’s proposal  to massage ‘unhelpful’ detail from scientific commentary. The Government has proposed a code of conduct which would prohibit scientists from ‘straying into advocacy’, gag them from commenting in the run up to an election, and have a PR team rewrite their opinions  for them.

 

Has the threat of such gagging, been enough to encourage scientists to begin greenwashing their own commentaries? They are very aware of where their research funding comes from, especially if they are DoC employees; and the threat to their spokesperson status, should they speak out of turn.

 

These fears are not without cause, as the fate of the Problem Gambling Foundation shows. They had their funding revoked for speaking out against the Government’s proposal to change the law limiting pokie machines at Sky City Casino in exchange for the casino building a conference centre in downtown Auckland (A project managed by Prime Minister John Key). PGF's  cash was turned over to the Salvation Army and accepted without qualms. They immediately began advertising for staff with appropriate religious convictions. This has placed the Army as front runners in receiving a third of the New Zealand state housing estate, as the Government moves to turn the provision of social housing back into the hands of charity organisations (as it had been prior to the 20th Century).

 

Track we were listening to while posting this - let's turn it over to the whales themselves Whale Songs

Jill Studd's Blog
contact us