August 23, 2010
Mr. Melville's Whale, A Biography of the Sperm Whale, University Press of Kansas, 2011
Next in his program of "saving the oceans, one species at a time," Richard Ellis has chosen the sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, probably the most fascinating animal on earth - or in the oceans.
Its name comes from the ludicrous misconception that the vast quantity of oil in its nose was the whale's seminal fluid - thus spermaceti ("seed of the whale") whale, later shortened to sperm whale. (Females, much smaller than males, also have an oil reservoir in their nose, but what was the seminal fluid doing in the female's nose?) But male or female, what a nose! It is the largest nose in the world, in a big male, reaching a length of 20 feet. In addition to all that oil, the whale's nose contains sacs, tubes, a single nostril (culminating in a single, off-center blowhole,) and a pair of lips - inside the nose. The function of these sacs, tubes, lips and the oil itself, is unknown, but they may somehow be connected with sound production. Sperm whales talk to each other in a language of bangs, clangs, clicks, creaks, snorts, and wheezes, but we don't have a clue as to what they're saying. They can also use the nasal apparatus to send out focussed sound beams that can kill or incapacitate their prey - squid, but not always giants - in the dark as much as a mile below the surface. (Sperm whales can hold their breath for and hour and a half.)
The sperm whale is the most infamous creature in American literature, transformed by Herman Melville into a white malevolence that rammed ships and killed those whalers with the temerity to hunt it. It was the primary object of the Yankee whale fishery, which harpooned them by the thousands for their oil, and their teeth, which were carved into scrimshaw. The high point of the sperm whale fishery was not the nineteenth century - it was the twentieth century. In the 1960s, Soviet and Japanese whaling fleets killed more sperm whales every year that the New Bedford of Nantucket whalers had killed in the entire history of their fishery.
August 20, 2010
On the Line
To hear Richard Ellis on Voice of America click here.
The World Wide Fund for Nature is urging the Japanese people to stop eating bluefin tuna. Three quarters of the bluefin consumed in the world is eaten in Japan, where it is prized as sushi and sashimi. Bluefin have been fished aggressively for decades, and the ocean's population of the big, fast-swimming tuna has dropped dramatically.
An effort this year to protect the fish through a ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna exports failed. Japan successfully lobbied against the ban at a meeting in March of this year of the U.N.'s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
This program of On The Line explores how serious the depletion of bluefin tuna in the world's oceans has become and what it tells us about the dangers of overfishing in other kinds of fish.
July 26, 2009
On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear, Knopf 2009
On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear
Knopf, November 17, 2009
Polar bears—fierce and majestic—have captivated us for centuries. Feared by explorers, revered by the Inuit, and beloved by zoo-goers everywhere, polar bears are a symbol for the harsh beauty and muscular grace of the Arctic. Today, as global warming threatens the ice caps’ integrity, the polar bear has also come to symbolize the peril that faces all life on Earth as a result of harmful human practices. Here, the acclaimed science writer Richard Ellis offers an impassioned and moving statement on behalf of polar bears—and all they stand for.
Ellis gives a vivid and carefully observed picture of Earth’s largest land predators—including their hunting, mating, and hibernation habits. Polar bears are exceptionally well suited for hunting—especially when it comes to ringed seals, their favorite prey, which they can smell from over a mile away. But as the ice melts in the Arctic, the ability of polar bears to find the food they need to survive diminishes in spite of their incredible physical capacities. Unable to find food, some bears will vainly take to the water in search of ice on which to hunt—many of them swim until they drown. In the past twenty years alone, the world population of polar bears has shrunk by half. Today they number just 22,000.
Still, On Thin Ice is an ode, not an elegy: Ellis reminds us that the extinction of the polar bear—and the disappearance of our ice caps—is far from inevitable. While the killing of polar bears remains a matter of ritual solemnity among the Inuit, our government officials continue to balk at placing the polar bear on the endangered species list because doing so would place the bears’ territory off-limits for oil drilling. As the polar bears’ habitat disappears beneath them, their survival rests entirely on our willingness to take such critical steps. Urgent and stirring, On thin Ice is both a celebration and a rallying cry on behalf of one of Earth’s greatest natural treasures.