Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus— grace the bottom of the
poster. I cannot read the Japanese text, but it is exciting to see that the
whales that I know so well have made it to this very small town off the
beaten path, and that in this place, everyone cares about whale evolu-
tion. The curator takes us out for lunch—there is whale meat—and then
shows us the sights of Taiji. We see where dolphins are kept for ship-
ment to aquariums, and the cove where the others are killed. I remem-
ber videos of fishermen killing the animals by stabbing them with long
knives. Sad and infuriating.
I think back on a display on the history of Taiji in the museum of the
marine park. Taiji was a little town on an unfriendly, rocky coast. There
is no flat land to grow crops, and in the past, this village was connected
to other villages only by slow winding paths. Coastal commerce was not
possible, because too many submerged rocks defeated cargo ships.
Going out in small boats to catch seafood was all the people could do.
Whale and dolphin catches were initially opportunistic, but around
1600, whaling became an industry, with men stationed on high points
as lookouts, using flags to signal wooden rowboats that were already
out on the ocean waiting, so a whale chase could start immediately.
Boats with about eight rowers gave chase, driving a large whale into a
net and slowing it down. A hunter with a harpoon would stand on the
stern of a row boat, throwing his weapon as they got close enough. This
was a major undertaking and might easily involve twenty boats. On a
188 | Chapter 13
hill nearby, we visit a monument to the whaling disaster of 1874. The
town was starving, and a whale was sighted. The whale had a calf, and
the whalers did not normally pursue mothers with calves. Emotions ran
high among the hunters, with different factions pushing to get the whale
so it could feed the people, or urging that it be left alone. A storm was
approaching. The empty-belly argument won, and the tiny wooden
rowboats went out. The storm closed in on the hunters. For days after-
ward, the bodies of young men, old men, and boys floated ashore: 111
did not return alive.
Back from my trip, in Tokyo, I present my research findings on our
study of the development of hind limbs in dolphins. Still jet-lagged, I am
sleepless at 3 a.m. as I go through the program. The talk after mine will
be by Seiji Ohsumi, the director of the Cetacean Research Institute, a
government agency that coordinates the whaling in Japan. His institute
is the face of the Japanese whaling industry to the outside world. The
industry claims that they catch whales for study—“scientific whaling,”
a rather laughable cover-up for the Japanese commercial whale-meat
industry that fools no one. Ohsumi and his colleagues are considered
the devil in a kimono by the whale conservation world. Ohsumi’s talk is
called “A Bottlenose Dolphin with Fin-Shaped Hind Appendages.” I
consider that he will probably see my presentation.
I would like to study Haruka, but I cannot agree with the drive hunt.
On the other hand, my information that consent with the hunt is a con-
dition is second-hand. If I did work on Haruka, who was captured in
the hunt, would that imply approval of the hunt?
I add a few of my pictures of Haruka to my presentation, labeling
them so it is clear where I took them. I also get ready to mention what
may have caused this particular anomaly in this individual. I am specu-
lating that SHH was switched off later in development than in other
cetaceans.
Ohsumi speaks after me. He is an old man, with blotched skin and
small eyes, well past seventy, I would guess. That generation of Japanese
is formal, and he wears a gray jacket, whereas most of the conference
attendees have shed their jackets after the first day. He discusses the
school of dolphins that was caught on October 28, 2006. Some escaped
as it was driven to the cove, but 118 dolphins were captured. Of these,
ten were “kept,” to be used for dolphin shows and aquaria, and the
implication is that the rest did not leave the cove alive. Haruka was one
of the lucky ten. Ohsumi goes through the other known cases of anoma-
lous development of the hind limbs of cetaceans, including the hump-
From Embryos to Evolution | 189
back whale caught near on Canada’s west coast in 1919 and the Russian
sperm whale. Then he shows a diagram of the management and study of
the animal, including a Breeding Group, a Function Group, a Genetics
Group, and a Morphology Group. Finally, he encourages those inter-
ested in studying the animal to contact an e-mail address on the screen. I
start to write it down: “haruka@”—and then stop. I cannot be part of
this.
Later, I speak to a Japanese scientist who explains that the Institute
for Cetacean Research is not on good terms with most Japanese aca-
demic scientists. The academic scientists do not believe that the scientific
whaling research yields trustworthy data. They find that the outcomes
are driven by political motives.
“In Japan, there are two sides, and the whaling gives Japanese science
a bad name,” he says.
I consider the fact that the entrails of all these dead dolphins, includ-
ing their early embryos, still in the womb, are lying on the black rocks
near where I was a few days ago. It’s an incredible opportunity, and a
thoroughly disturbing image.
I think about the nuances of the issue. Dolphins are different from
whales—smarter, more social. At some point, the mayor of Taiji pro-
posed to stop the dolphin hunt if his town was allowed to hunt fifty
minke whales. Whaling of a species that is abundant, not all that intel-
ligent, and killed after a fast chase, seems more humane and sustainable
than the dolphin hunt. From my perspective, it is an idea worth consid-
ering. However, the IWC is like a dysfunctional family, and the pro- and
contra-whaling groups are too far apart for a compromise. There are no
winners in this fight. Everybody loses, including the whales.
Haruka will live her life,4 receiving excellent care in her golden jail
and providing propaganda for the Japanese whaling industry. She will
hopefully also inspire its visitors to be engaged about whales. Maybe
some good will c
ome of that.
To learn more about hind limb evolution in cetaceans, I need to study
artiodactyls—old ones, and preferably from India or Pakistan, since
that is where cetaceans originated. Again, I am confronted with the fact
that I have to focus away from marine rocks and start digging in rocks
that have terrestrial animals.
Chapter 14
Before Whales
the widow’s fossils
Driving on the Gangetic Plain in India March 12, 2005. It is a long and
pleasant drive to Dehradun, a straight road initially, then suddenly the
Himalayas appear at the horizon. An hour later, the road, a lane-and-a-
half wide, reaches them, and snakes across their front range. Today, we
are traveling in the middle of an artillery convoy, trying to pass the
trucks one by one. The passing is useless. In front of each truck–cannon
pair is another truck–cannon pair. It seems as if all the guns the Indian
army has are being moved to Dehradun. We reach a tunnel through a
mountain, and come to a stop, the barrel of the gun pulled by the truck
in front of us pointing straight at our windshield. “I hope that it is not
loaded,” my assistant, Brooke, says. In quiet, I wonder if it is an omen
that predicts fireworks to come on our mission.
I am on my way to meet Dr. Friedlinde Obergfell, the widow of the
Indian geologist Anne Ranga Rao. Ranga Rao discovered a rich fossil
locality near the Line of Control in the Himalayas, in the disputed territory
of Kashmir, near the village of Kalakot. It turned out to be the largest col-
lection of Eocene fossil mammals known from this subcontinent, larger
than German professor Dehm’s sites in the Kala Chitta Hills, and those of
all fossil collectors that were here before: West, Gingerich, and myself.
Ashok Sahni, the heavyweight of Indian paleontology, heard about it, and
sent his student to the site to collect too. Ranga Rao was furious—his
191
192 | Chapter 14
locality was being raided. He was also rich, and he had the entire site exca-
vated. Trucks were loaded with the fossil-containing rocks and took them
to his estate in Dehradun. Professor Dehm invited Ranga Rao to come to
Germany and study Eocene fossils. There, he met Dehm’s assistant,
Friedlinde Obergfell, and married her. Ranga Rao was an outsider to pale-
ontology, unable to study and publish his fossils adequately. The experi-
ence with Sahni drove him and his wife into seclusion and secrecy. Although
he was able to extract a few fossils and publish them, most were left in
burlap bags in his cellar, and a mound of fossil rocks occupies his yard.
The paranoia worsened; he drank and chain-smoked, and eventually died
from a brain tumor. After his death, his wife, left alone in a country where
she did not even speak the language, kept up the siege mentality. She
allowed no scientist to study the fossils, and approached even the most
innocent interactions with paleontologists with the greatest suspicion.
In spite of that, I have been trying my luck with her by visiting her
every time I come to India. I hope to endear myself to her, being Euro-
pean by birth and being able to speak German. I have my reasons. This
is the largest collection of Eocene artiodactyls from India, and it is our
best bet at finding the closest relative to whales. These artiodactyls are
in the right place, at the right time, a fact that has not escaped other
whale workers, too.1
With Brooke and several Indians, I visit the estate again this year,
high up on the slope of the high Himalayas in Dehradun’s fanciest
neighborhood. One of the Indians is Dr. Raju, who was a good friend
and colleague of Ranga Rao. A servant, an old man with a wool cap,
comes to the gate in the rough brick wall that surrounds the place, and
lets us pass. A large pile of gray and purple shale lies to the side of the
house. I know that there are fossils in there—that pile is more valuable
than gold to me—but I keep walking. It looks like rain.
The house seems like a ghost. It is surrounded by verandas covered
with construction material. There are large windows of all shapes and
sizes, but it is dark inside. It appears unoccupied, and parts of it are not
finished. The lady meets us at a smaller house behind the big one. She is
a small woman, with wrinkled and yellowish skin, bent by age, her face
frozen in a scowl, unsmiling. Her unkempt gray hair is in a bun, and she
wears striped pajama pants and a flowered blouse. But you can also see
that she used to be tall, strong, and beautiful. Her eyes are piercing, light
blue, and they look straight into the heart.
We sit down for tea. She does most of the talking. She has a lot to
say. For the rest of us, it is difficult to be heard, because she is quite
Before Whales | 193
deaf. She explains the injustice done to her and her husband, first by
the paleontologists, then by all the Indians that have stolen her money
and her things, from carpenters, to bank employees, to grocers.
Her life story is a tale of stubbornness, obsession, and sorrow. Her
father was a World War I soldier, but a pacifist in World War II, shunned
by the Nazis. She got married just before the German army invaded
France, Belgium, and my native country, the Netherlands. Her new hus-
band, an engineer, was in the army and died in that invasion. She was a
young female student, in a country that was slipping into totalitarian-
ism and militarism. However, that did not scare her, and she pursued her
education with great effort, studying with some of the greatest minds of
German science. One of her professors was Willi Hennig, the father of
the modern science of systematics. Hennig believed that Germany would
win the war. Never shy to have strong opinions, she challenged him,
saying that Germany would lose.
“We are in the middle, a hare surrounded by foxes, we have nowhere
to run,” she says, quoting herself. Hennig’s reply came confidently: “We
are not a hare.”
After choosing paleontology as her field, she worked with Professor
Dehm in Munich to get a PhD degree. Dehm was on a long fossil-collec-
tion trip when the war broke out, and got stuck in Australia. He was
unable to return to Germany. The authorities let him go on the condition
that h
e sign a letter promising on his honor not to become a soldier in the
German army. He did; he kept his word and stayed out of the war. The
Nazis, unhappy with him, pushed him out of his job in the Nazi heart-
land of Bavaria to the scientific and societal backwater of Strasbourg.
After the war, with Germany shattered, Dehm moved back to Munich,
and Frau Obergfell became his assistant. The allies gave her a certificate
indicating that she had not been involved with the Nazis. It was there
that she met Ranga Rao, some twenty years later, and married him.
She looks at me. “You cannot trust any Indians, they are all liars.” I
wince, but keep my mouth shut, sitting there with one crazy German
lady and four Indian colleagues whom I trust and respect.
I try to change the subject, explaining that those fossils are important
and that I want to study them. I ask her permission. She ignores the ques-
tion, maybe she does not hear it, but I think she does. She tells us that the
fossils are part of a trust that she and her late husband founded. The fos-
sils will be prepared and studied at the trust, under her supervision. She
wants to make this house a center for the study of the fossils that her
husband found. She leads us on a tour of the big house, a skeletal mansion
194 | Chapter 14
haunted by the broken hopes of the Frau and Ranga Rao. There are still
shipping crates, unopened, from when she came from Europe, more than
thirty years ago; there are no light fixtures or furniture. Her nephew
steadies her by holding her hand as she goes up the spiral stairwell. The
plans are grand: here will be the room with the fossil collection, here is the
library, here the map room. Her vision for the place is a stifled obses-
sion—the real and perceived injustices have sapped her initiative, and
nothing has happened here for years.
“How long will you be here?” she asks me.
I hesitate. “We leave Dehradun tomorrow,” I say, raising my voice to
be heard.
“That is too short, you cannot do anything.”
The Walking Whales Page 29
