by Chris Marais
Whale products – over the centuries – have been many and varied. The flexible baleen was used for umbrella and bicycle-wheel spokes, buggy whips, shoe horns, chair springs, corset boning, hairbrush bristles, fans … even the fine baleen hairs were used for brooms. The Russians specialised in the production of golf bags fashioned from whale penises.
Spermacetti, found in the heads of sperm whales, was used to create nitroglycerine (an essential item in certain explosives), blubber went into candles, and whale oil lubricated engines and turned up in cosmetics, margarine and soap. It was the petrochemical industry of its day and also a food additive. As a child, I once heard that there was whale in my ice cream. I went on an ‘ice cream hunger strike’ for at least three weeks before being seduced back to the Walls cart by the siren song of the dreaded Eskimo Pie.
Along the coastline of South Africa, whales were big business. In the early days of colonisation, Jan van Riebeeck came across a dead whale on the beach near Salt River mouth. He jumped on top of it, struck a heroic pose and called upon his trumpeter to play ‘Wilhelmus van Nassauwen’, no doubt a stirring martial number.
Between 1785 and 1805, more than 12 000 southern right whales died along the southern coastline of South Africa. Whalers came from all over the world to join in the slaughter. In the early 1800s, whaling was right up there with wine and agriculture as one of the three most lucrative industries around here.
By the middle of the 19th century, southern right numbers were a tiny fraction of what they had been. But the whaling continued all around the world, and the biggest victims were the enormous blue whales. Even today, after decades of moratoria and restrictions on whaling, their numbers are so depleted that some experts believe they cannot hear each other in the sea any more. As a result, they cannot mate easily.
The Japanese kicked off their whaling industry by using poison on whales. By the 1300s they switched to the spear, which involved an attack at close quarters. It turned into a stylised ritual. Wise points out something interesting: both the Shinto and Buddhist religions forbade the eating of meat. Whales were thought to be fish. Now that everyone knows whales are mammals, the irony of it all is that whale meat should be more of a taboo in Japan than almost anywhere else on earth.
According to reports in 2005, the desire in Japan for whale meat started to flag. The local industry (which still killed whales for ‘scientific purposes’) was concerned about its massive stocks of frozen whale meat lying in storage while the youth of Japan wolfed down their McMeals instead. The Washington Post reported that Japanese students were targeted in a marketing campaign to get them to eat more whale. They were fed plates of deep-fried whale chunks at school and given recipes for whale burgers.
Opinion polls, however, suggested that Japanese kids were more interested in saving whales than eating them. Tokyo restaurants had started offering ‘early bird’ specials on whale meals at a big discount. This did not sit well with the Japanese government, who said the nation needed whale meat to become more self-sufficient. They were specifically referring to Minke whales, which, they claimed, had eaten up most of their local stocks of cod and sardines.
Although Japan has been eating whale for centuries, it was their post-World War II food shortage that propelled them into destroying global stocks. They were, in fact, encouraged by the American military to go out and kill whales for dinner. The American Occupation overlord, General Douglas MacArthur, said whales were “cheap protein” and the Japanese should tuck in with gusto.
The wheel turned, and now the American anti-whaling lobby was hoping that Japan’s growing love of fast food would stave off attempts to revive serious whale cuisine.
Another alarming factor for those who liked blubber burgers and flesh of Minke was that a lot of it, by the beginning of the 21st century, was contaminated with mercury. Chemical analysis of 60 samples of meat and blubber bought over the counter from Japanese supermarkets revealed dangerous levels of mercury. “Whales, dolphins and porpoises (cetaceans) are susceptible to accumulating toxins like mercury, as they are long-lived and feed at high trophic levels,” stated a report handed in at the 55th AGM of the International Whaling Commission. “Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, and scientists have found that even low concentrations can cause damage to nervous systems. Developing foetuses and children are especially at risk.”
The science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once predicted that the world would ‘farm’ cetaceans in ocean corrals, in much the same way that we farm beef. Imagine feed lots for dolphins, I thought. But then, good fortune, good sense and inventiveness all converged to give the whales of the world a break. It was called whale tourism – the greatest threat to whaling ever.
As far back as 1997 Jules and I had been out to sea with a posse of teenage Japanese tourists to look for whales off the coast of Plettenberg Bay. We saw their faces as plumes of whale breath were spotted just after the morning sun rose over the Indian Ocean. Their joy as we found ourselves in the midst of more than 4 000 cavorting common dolphins and then later a brace of southern right whales was, to quote a classic poet, “unconfined”. Not one of the Japanese kids said they felt peckish.
For some reason, whales and humans have an emotional link. We have it with elephants as well. In times gone by, humans misread that link and presumed it meant we had to hunt them down, butcher them and then think of them with great nostalgia in the evenings as we looked upon their carved bones.
“I could just love you to death.” And we actually meant it.
Nowadays, it is one of life’s finer pleasures to sit on the rocks in Walker Bay, with the tourist buzz of Hermanus behind us, and quietly observe the great pods of southern right whales coming in to show off new babies and generally rest up from their hectic Antarctic krill-feasts. As the people – many of them Japanese visitors – watched the whales in the late-afternoon light, a festival of quiet, exultant joy spread over all of us like magical fairy dust. I’m a hoary old hack who’s seen it all. Give me a good dose of satire over a sunset any day. And yet, whenever Jules and I find ourselves on the ‘whale rocks’ of Hermanus, we buy into the rapture of seeing a southern right.
Just below us was Bientang’s Cave, a restaurant named after the last-known Strandloper in the area. She lived in a nearby cave in the late 1700s and, by all accounts, made a very comfortable nest for herself. She drank water from a mountain stream, gathered seafood (like someone you’re going to meet later in this chronicle – South Africa’s only real Robinson Crusoe, still going strong in 2005) and cultivated a little vegetable garden for herself.
Bientang was said to communicate with all manner of animals, including the southern right whales. And the legend goes that year after year the whales would return to this spot in Walker Bay to speak with her. Perhaps to give her an update on matters down south, where the emperor penguins hung out. It was a good legend that fitted in perfectly with the business of watching whales – the southern rights in particular.
This species of whale was enjoying an amazing comeback from the brink of extinction. As we embarked on our Shorelines venture, there were more southern right whales off our Cape coast than in the previous 150 years. By 2005, about 2 000 were visiting our shores each year, and their numbers were doubling every decade. The whales – originally called ‘right’ whales because they were the ‘right’ whales to hunt – were down to a tiny group of 40 adult females by 1940, when it was finally decided that they were to be protected. There used to be nearly 300 000 of them before intensive whaling began in the 18th century – and they were now up to total of about 12 000, thinly spread across the southern hemisphere’s oceans.
As I write this in the South African autumn of 2006, the whale-watching industry is growing by 40% a year and is a worldwide business worth US$1 billion. No small potatoes, even for the lobbyists in the ‘If It Pays, It Stays’ camp of conservation. It’s like the whales said:
“Don’t shoot us. We’ll come and visit you. Make you happy. Make you rich.”
Land-based whale watching is becoming so popular in South Africa that it is bringing more tourists here than the legendary Kruger National Park, which offers the Big Five of the animal kingdom. And where the whales go, the merchandising is not far behind. Hermanus is awash with whale themes, whale ‘stuff’ and very good whale art. A whale festival, a nearby estate that offers a superb Southern Right brand of wines and a string of guesthouses and restaurants flying whale logos – the sleepy little town of Hermanus has woken up and become Whale Central to the world.
Early one morning we left our digs – the home of Jules’s mother Trudy Dickens and her husband Derrick in Sandbaai, near Hermanus – and drove off to Kleinbaai to join Dyer Island Cruises for a boat-based whale encounter.
I was looking to shoot the perfect ‘sailing’ photograph of any whale we encountered. ‘Sailing’ is what happens when the whale stands perpendicular to the surface of the sea and all that one views of him is his lovely tail. I wanted that tail, feverishly. Having been out to sea for ‘whale tail’ more than a dozen unsuccessful times, I was finding it somewhat of a mission. But my palms were, as yet, unbloodied.
Attired in bright orange mackintoshes and lifebelts, we walked in a saffron cloud of eager tourists down the main road of Kleinbaai to the little harbour and onto Wilfred Chivell’s boat, Whale Whisperer. Once out at sea, we passed the good boat Shark Fever, which had just hit the jackpot. A great white was showing off his ‘Air Jaws’ manoeuvres to the stunned group of adventurers on board. But for me today was ‘Whale Day’ – the shark thing would wait for another time.
We came across a gathering of brindled southern right whales engaged in recreational sex. Pale Male, as we called him, was schmoozing a far larger female, turning and exposing his snowy belly to her. They began embracing one another with their flippers. Everyone on board laughed quietly, totally seduced by the scene. The whales peered at us briefly before rolling back onto one another with an air of measured exuberance. But not one of them showed the faintest urge to ‘sail’ for my sweaty cameras.
Then the girl whale rested her head on Pale Male, forming an affectionate T-shape, and I forgot my particular mission for the moment. Just like the whaler Terry Wise, I was transfixed by these great animals.
“Men no longer go whaling from London and Belfast, Liverpool and Newcastle,” he concludes. “Gone forever are the whalers of Scotland, the Shetland Islands, South Africa and Holland …. In a score of small hamlets men now spend the long Norwegian nights gazing at their souvenirs and scars and remembering the savage beauty of the untamed, ice-bound Southern Ocean. I suspect it will not be long before the men from Russia and Japan also cease to make that long, lonely voyage.”
In the year 2006, with a health scare, a much-reduced taste for whale meat and absolutely no need for a whalebone corset, the world is still waiting for its remaining whalers to come to their senses …
Chapter 15: Kleinbaai
Jaws For Life
On a stormy midsummer morning in Mozambique, I am all of six years old and deep in the drink, encircled by questing sharks. I have been nagging my stepdad to let me join his band of merry fishermen for days now. I want to catch a barracuda, all teeth and attitude and quite pleasant to eat with a touch of piri piri sauce. Grudgingly, with a list of fierce warnings from my anxious mother, they allow me on board. My virgin deep-sea fishing adventure.
So maybe I am the young Jonah of the crew, because things go horribly wrong on the little Four Escudos fishing boat out there, between wind and wave. We capsize and go “up so floating” in the words of the poet (ee cummings). I am dragged onto the hull by a relative as the tide takes the belly-up Four Escudos out past Inhaca Island and towards the open waters of the Indian Ocean.
As the others wave shirts and things at passing cargo ships, I am trying to dislodge a large fish hook from the fleshy part of my inner thigh. There is some of my blood in the water. But hell, it’s a big ocean, who’s gonna notice?
Ha. Within the first hour you can cue in the da-dum da-dum music as ominous black fins begin appearing around the boat. Numb from shock, I can only stare with fascination as the sharks make their enquiries. Some approach so close, we can all see into their beady black eyes. Are you possibly food? Won’t you just lean a little closer into the water?
After 12 hours at sea, we’re saved by a Norwegian fishing trawler. Mother is at quayside, gently steaming. Her little boy grows up with a big fish in his memory bank.
More than 35 years later, I am sitting in a garret in Vrededorp, Jo’burg, writing The Never-ending Novel. One of the subplots concerns The Submarine, a 9-metre great white shark that comes from False Bay and eats a six-pack of Chinese long-distance swimmers (by accident) as they come flapping around Cape Point, earning everlasting hatred from their boss, a Hong Kong gangster.
The book contains huge helpings of sex slaves, heroes on Harleys, an evil professor in a Tiger Moth bi-plane, mystical Bushmen and a crazy pub crow in a Namaqualand village called Wolf Harbour – it’s really Port Nolloth, but don’t tell a soul.
Throughout all the action (entitled Little Fish Tremble – Unpublished) the villainous Johnny Lo Fat pursues The Submarine up the coast with a passion equalled only by Captain Ahab in his chase after the white whale in Moby Dick.
You’ll probably never get to read Little Fish Tremble in its current format. So let me say right here: the shark wins.
Far from instilling deep fear in me for old Carcharodon carcharias (the great white), that little childhood spill in Mozambique was the beginning of an enduring love affair with this fish, so elegantly designed and intensely focused.
Another five years later, I am finally back with the real thing on a boat called Predator with a local legend called Brian McFarlane. We’re at Kleinbaai in the southern Cape, and with us is a young adventure-nut called Roger Underdown, a night-shift maintenance fitter from Kent. Roger, who says “sumfink” instead of “something”, thinks I have the funniest accent he’s heard all week.
The cheerful traveller is going to meet a great white today from the confines of a cage lowered into the sea near Dyer Island, which is where the sharks normally gather for their Supersized McSeals. Roger has seen the eclipse in Romania, has climbed Kilimanjaro and, as soon as he’s ticked off his shark experience, is driving down the Garden Route to throw himself off the tallest bungee spot in the world. Then he’s off to Madagascar to look for a really big butterfly.
Back home, Roger sits there on the night shift surrounded by pulsating machinery and travel brochures, making up his mind where his mighty English pound will take him next.
As he emerges from the cage four hours later, Roger has clearly had an epiphany. His hands shake, his eyes shine and the words come tumbling from his mouth.
From the viewing deck on Predator, I am equally gobsmacked. A 4-metre great white shark has come boiling out of the water in pursuit of Brian’s foul-smelling chum and for a while it’s all about many white teeth and grey speed and those eyes, those implacable, black-hole eyes I remember from my childhood brush with death.
You see movies on TV about sharks and suddenly your sitting room becomes a fish tank and you’re on the great white lunch menu. As the killing machine lunges out of the wide screen, you take cover behind the coffee table. But once you’re out here and the wind is blowing over the sea and the boat is bobbing and the shark is rising from the water, it’s not about fear. You stand in awe of this living cruise missile that has been here, in this perfect form, master and commander of the southern seas, for many millions of years. And it’s nothing like seeing the old Jaws shark at Universal Studios in California, either.
The boat-based experience is so mystical and life-changing that your next urge will be to hunt down every shark-fin diner on Earth, tie a sardine to his forehead, stretch him out on a sea-going rack and let the gannets have their way with him.
When you first meet Brian McFarlane you notice he has hands like plates. Almost everything about the man is
larger than life. His roots run deep in the local seafaring community, going back to his great-grandfather, who opened up the first hotel in Gans Bay. His dad, Brian Snr, came back from a World War II prisoner-of-war camp and began the first perlemoen-canning business at nearby Onrus.
Brian Jnr spent his childhood days diving for perlemoen.
“I was paid sixpence a perly,” he said. “I probably earned more than my schoolteachers. At 16, I had a Jeep and a boat. I could not see the benefits of going to school any longer, so I left for a life at sea.”
His first professional appointment was on a fishing boat, but his diving skills soon led him to look for sunken treasure. McFarlane’s life story is one of those Boys’ Own adventures, with not a Game Boy or computer screen or Internet chat room in sight. He and his mates found the fabled 24 guns of the Sacramento, which were sold to collectors and museums around the world. Then Brian went diamond diving on the West Coast, and they still talk about him to this day up there in the mists of Port Nolloth.
“I seemed to have a nose for those diamond pockets,” he said. “My boss used to introduce me to people as ‘my champion’.”
Sometimes, Brian’s boat would arrive back on shore well after the bank’s closing time, so he was unable to store the day’s ‘catch’ in its vaults.
“More than once I would be walking around with a thousand carats in my pocket and sleeping with a bagful of diamonds under my pillow.”
In 1993 Brian decided to come home to Hermanus and settle down. He bought the old clubhouse on the local golf course and set up a guesthouse. But he kept breaking plates and missing the sea, so he left the running of the guesthouse to his wife, Sandy.
Brian bought a small boat for fishing and tourist excursions. Some 12 years on, that ‘little business’ had morphed into Predator II, a large boat that could take 20 passengers. In three years of shark-cage trips, his clients had missed shark sightings on only nine occasions. And if they missed a shark, their next trip on Predator would be free.
