Save the Whales!

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I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we are going crunchy granola even today. Talking about saving the whales, which Chuck, I don't know about you, but for me that was like a big part of my childhood.

So this is a little bit nostalgic for me. - Yeah, I mean, if you're insinuating I grew up under a rock in the 1970s, that is not the case. - You did live on a gravel road.

That's true. - But we're rocks involved. - I lived among rocks, but yeah, I mean, I would go out on a limb and say that, well, this article says "Save the Whales" is one of the most successful environmental conservation movements

in history, but I'm from my mouth to nine years. I'm going to say I think the Save the Whales campaign is one of the most effective marketing campaigns across any genre in history. - Wow.

- Wow. - It was that ubiquitous. - Yeah, it was super ubiquitous. I think you caught more of it than me, even the stuff that I caught was a little bit

of the after wash. - I don't know.

“- I don't know. - Like remember that thing?”

- You were living, well, no, I was still a thing, but I think the peak, I missed the peak and you were living right through it, 'cause the 70s were like, when this really started to ramp up big time.

And I'm sure plenty of people out there have heard Save the Whales, and it is like a pretty ubiquitous slogan, used to be even more ubiquitous like we're saying, but despite that there wasn't like one person or group

that you're like, that they started Save the Whales, it almost just kind of bubbled up into the collective consciousness, and a bunch of different groups kind of started doing the same thing.

Sometimes working together, other times doing it independently, but the whole goal was to preserve declining Whale populations from extinction, and they all were kind of under the same banner

of Save the Whales. - Yeah, and we're gonna talk a little bit about the actual saving of the Whales. We're gonna talk a little bit about that campaign, slogan, and how that was a thing.

But if you wanna talk about just the words, Save the Whales, that did not come about in the 1970s. That became a thing, and I mean, the phrase dates back to the 1800s, like the 1880s, but it really became a thing in the 1920s

when Whale conservation was first a little flicker

on the radar of, I mean, what would be early conservationists. But in 1928, there was a homologist group that had to save the Whales meeting in Washington, DC, and that's when it really kicked off as far as,

like, you know, there were buttons, and there was just a satirical poem written about how ubiquitous it was in the 1920s and 30s, so it was definitely a big thing early on. - Yeah, and those articles,

I think Anna helped us with this one. She dug up some articles from the 20s about those meetings, and they were likening saving the Whales to the bison populations that almost went extinct, you know, just a few decades before.

So the lesson was learned by some, and they're like, these Whales aren't gonna be around

It spread around the world,

“like other countries started kind of their own”

save the Whale initiatives. It was clear that we were overwailing, and yet, despite that, in the 1920s and 30s, Whaling was still generally antiquated. It was still the kind of whaling

that you think of like, new Bedford Massachusetts, like the salty old sea dog with a peg leg and a spear in his other hand, a pipe, maybe even a parrot, like out there whaling with a harpoon that he's using with his hands.

They killed a lot of Whales like that, but it was nothing compared to the industrial whaling that started in like the middle of the 20th century. - Yeah, I mean, they started having literal cannons mounted on the side of a ship that would shoot

exploding harpoons, and by the '60s, they were taking 80,000 Whales a year. - Yeah. - Blue Whales near extinction, plenty of others and like Grave Danger, I am taking my first trip

to Nantuck at the summer, and that is, they have a Whaley Museum there. - Yeah. - That I'm gonna go to.

I've never even been to that part of the country really.

So, I'm eager to go and not to celebrate whaling, but just as a sort of historical museum kind of thing, Emily has already said that she won't be going. - No, I can understand that. It would be kind of hard to take for sure.

- Yeah, but I mean, I imagine it's fairly interesting is just a blip in time, but it's not, I doubt if they're trying to sell you one whaling. - Really? - I hope you're right. - Remember, Wayne? - Yeah.

- It's great about Nantuck at that is like, to Dirty Limirx, what, Nia is the crosswords. - Wow. - Yeah, yeah, that's a nice pool. - So, a good comparison here is like,

like I said, new bed for Massachusetts, that area, Nantuck it, Cape Cotta, I guess? - Sure. - They, this was like the seat of whaling internationally in like the mid-19th century.

And over this, basically, this decade

of American dominance of whaling, they took 100,000 whales. Now what you're saying is that by the '60s, they're taking almost that amount in one year, not a decade.

“- Yeah. - That's how much it had gotten stepped up.”

And if the people in the '20s and the '30s were worried about whales going extinct before, using the kind of antiquated original whaling techniques, this new stuff was really a threat to them. - Yeah, for sure.

And the '70s, it's sort of merged with the post '60s crunchiness to really become a big thing. But going back to the '30s, in 1930 on the nose, the League of Nations got together and established the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics, just so they could see if it truly was a bison situation.

And a year later they're like, yep, it's pretty bad. They're declining, big time. And so '22 Nations signed an agreement at the Geneva Convention that year for the regulation of whaling to put some limits.

And that was kind of the first move was in 1931.

- You know what else I saw too? It's something else that saved the whales in the first half of the 20th century was the invention of the light bulb because people didn't need whale-oil for lamps anymore. - Yeah, I mean, I guess we should say that.

They wailed because that blubber was oil for lamps and people also ate it. And also, we're not gonna not talk about indigenous populations where it's, you know, they depended on that stuff for sustenance and some still do.

So yeah, that's why they wailed.

“- Well, also, that's why some of these early,”

I guess international agreements on conserving whale stocks were created, not because they're like whaling's wrong. They were like, we need to be able to keep whaling in the future so let's not overdo it now.

Let's figure out what is a sustainable amount. That's what the earliest agreements were for. - Yeah, let's stop whaling some so we can keep whaling. - Exactly. - So that was first one, 31.

37 came along in 10 nation signed on to another one, called the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling. Also put some more limits. It banned blue, humpback, thin, and sperm whales under certain lengths, but it was still declining.

So in 1946, the International Whaling Commission, they just keep starting these commissions and getting member countries on board and it's really not making much of a difference. - Right.

- And they did that in '46 again with 14 member nations, but the '46 when you know aligned, or I guess the 37 aligned with World War II so they were like, we can't go without this oil like at this time, so it didn't really have any teeth.

- Yeah, not only that, they needed meat, so they weren't in a position in the world, but it's in a position after World War II to be like, no, let's stop taking this meat, like whale meat fed a lot of people

from World War II. So yeah, those agreements were kind of like, now this isn't gonna work right now. And then as things started to ramp up because now there was a much bigger market

that hadn't been there before for whale meat,

“like a global market, that's why it became”

this industrial factory farming version of whaling, right? So because there was just a lot more money to be made,

so the people who finally started to save the whales

campaign to the 70s had a really huge hill to climb. The biggest hill anyone who was against whaling itself ever had to climb in the history of whaling. - Yeah, for sure, but it was like I said, kind of the right time coming out of the '60s,

there were a lot more just sort of environmental concerns popping up. The EPA was a little more in the limelight and it was just more awareness of that kind of thing. And then there was a big perspective shift that happened

that was much, much different from those earlier ones like you were saying where it was like, let's conserve so we can keep whaling. Like this was a legitimate, like, hey, these things were realizing our intelligent

and that started happening in the 1950s, like finding out that whales were smart. - Yeah.

- Thanks to a Navy Engineer named Frank Wattlington

was a really big change. - Well, yeah, he liked to, I almost have the sense that it was in his spare time. Record with a hydrophoned, the underwater sounds of the Navy like shooting off bombs.

And he accidentally caught some whale songs of some baling whales. And he was like, this is, I've not heard stuff like this before, it seems like there's a pattern to it or a rhythm or they keep coming back to like a chorus, I don't know.

So we gave it to some marine biologist to actually took it and released it as an album in 1970, songs of the humpback whale. - Have you listened to it? - Oh yeah, most of my adult life.

- Yeah, it's just so mellow, it's so ambient,

“that you're like, wait, did they add some synth here?”

And no, it's just nothing but whale songs, right?

- Yeah, Brian, you know, had nothing to do with it. - Right, so I can't imagine, this was released in 1970. I can't imagine between 1970 and 1980, how much acid was dropped? Listening to the album songs of the humpback whale, man.

It was like, made for it. - So maybe I think this got to be fair use. We can just play a short snippet just so people can hear a piece, yeah? - Okay, sure, let's give it a shot.

- All right, here we go, everybody, with songs of the humpback whale on S-Y, S-K. (laughing) (eerie music) - Here is part of the same song,

played it at its naturals, be even pitch, just the way other whales here. All the sounds are made by one whale. Both the highest, squeaky tones, and the low rumbly whales.

(eerie music) - Wow, what an album, right? - Yeah, I mean, it's the only multiplayer platinum album of animal sounds, which is completely believable.

- Yeah, I can't imagine there's too many more. - Yeah, I mean, it actually became a huge hit. It's the only multiplayer platinum album of animal sounds, which I guess, now they think about it is completely believable.

- Right, but if you, just go listen to it. It's only like a half hour or so long.

“I think it's a, it says songs of the humpback whale.”

There's so many different songs that I've like, there's gotta be different species involved. It's just neat, just go listen. - Yeah, it's super cool. And the whole point of it all was

is that it raised awareness people were all the sudden like, wait, these, like scientists said, I think they're communicating here, and they're super smart, like Chuck Wood later say, in a podcast.

And so save the whales, campaign, all of a sudden had a, had a kind of different rallying cry, which is like, hey, we're, you know, these aren't just big dumb logs floating around in the ocean. These are really super smart animals to be protected.

- Right, and so an environmental ease, they became ambassador animals for the ocean as a whole. - Yeah. - Like, this is now an animal that you can make people care about. And now we have to go get the word out

and by saving whales, you're also gonna save everything else in the whale's ecosystem that you're, you're working to preserve. - That's right, should we take it right? - Yeah, I was about to say the same thing.

So, jinx, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, not you owe me nine coaks. - Gosh, all right, I'm gonna go the store and we'll be right back. (dramatic music)

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“After a delay that you don't need to even know about, right?”

It's our business. - Yeah. - None yet. - So save the whales is kicked off in the 70s. And I think you mentioned earlier on it's, you know,

sometimes it was in parallel with one another. It wasn't like just one group doing this, but everyone got on board with that same three words, because it was a very unifying thing. And this is sort of a loose timeline of how it started.

And it kicked off in 1971 when the animal welfare institute got together with a fund for animals to officially launch the 1970s version of the Save the Whales campaign. - Right. - And they started doing things like, you know,

going to teachers' conventions, you know, sending out, you know, information and mailers and placing ads and saying, like, hey, maybe we should boycott wailing nations, that kind of stuff. - Right, yeah.

And just a few years, they started a pretty big boycott.

“I think in 1974, they said, no Japanese goods.”

No Russian goods. Yes, we're even talking about vodka. They had to say that a lot. - Yeah. - And I think 18 other groups signed on.

And I think five million Americans said, yes,

no Russian goods, no Japanese goods. Let's save the whale's hot damn. For real, they got benefit concerts together. I know David Bowie in 1972, had a very, he had a very famous Save the Whales benefit concert.

You know, of course, Greenpeace would get on board early on, although they would get on board two years after it started with their project, Ahab, which was a little surprising. - They're like, no, wait, what about the panda? I thought we were all doing the panda.

They're like, that's later. We'll do the panda next. We're gonna save the whales now. Finally, Greenpeace came around. - Yeah, and, you know, a lot of this early stuff

like in the mid 70s, the Connecticut Citation Society.

“Just like literally went from town to town”

and Connecticut with saved the whales events and places like Mendocino, California, had the Mendocino whale festival and founded the Mendocino whale war. So it's like, you know,

and this is where wailing is taking place mainly and these are like sort of a little small coastal town. So it wasn't like, you know, we're gonna go to New York City and have this big event like they were doing it where it was going on.

- Yeah, and there were like different ways of doing this. Some were like, we want to go like,

basically confront wailing ships, where they're wailing.

Other people are like, let's just, we just need to raise awareness and raise money and all, like, it wasn't like this thing that I'm doing is the right way to do it. It was like, okay, you're gonna do that.

All handle this over here and all together, we're gonna save the whales. Even though there wasn't like necessarily a lot of coordination going on, it was just, you know, you kind of look to your left

and see somebody like trying to save the whales with you and you just kind of give them like a finger gun and a wink and be like right on. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, they're proposed moratoriums and stuff like that

and we'll get into the weeds about how that actually went down in a little bit, but one of the big things that happened in the '70s was that T-shirt. In 1977, there was a woman named Maris Sidon Stecker who had been selling these shirts for like three years,

like really successfully since I think 1974 and she was 16 years old and in '77 founded, because of the success of these T-shirts, founded her own conservation group called Save the Whales. - Yeah, she had a small ad in Rolling Stone,

“just this recurring ad and that's how she got the word”

out about the T-shirts and then one of the things I saw about her, she was named Maris Sidon Stecker the second because her mother was Maris Sidon Stecker the first. - No, it's unusual, but pretty cool, huh? - Yeah, usually that would be junior.

- Well, you just don't usually see that with women, it's mostly men, you know? - Well, it's 'cause men are the only people who think their name means something. - Well, sure. The Sidon Stecker women stuck their thumb

in the eye of the patriarchy is what they did. - We put it on this building or on my parking spot. - So let's talk about some of the tactics they took. Like I said, you look to your left, look to your right, all these people are taking these different approaches

to it, it's all about saving the whales. One of the easiest ones is to just kind of go to the kids, because as we'll see, if you can go to the younger generation, that's like the long game that you're playing, but it's also the one that's more likely to pay off.

If you teach little kids that whales are smart, that they live in families, that they care about their babies, just like your mom cares about you, those kids are gonna grow up to see whales is not something that you kill for blubber or meat,

“but something that you need to protect from people”

who want to kill them for their blubber or meat. - Yeah, for sure. So that was, you know, that's kind of the starting point, I think, is just educating the children, the children's. We already talked about obviously, you know,

public events like concerts and protests and boycotts, the merchandising, like the t-shirt, like that's not just like, "Hey, let me make this shirt." Like bumper stickers and shirts and buttons are a big part of any kind of movement like that.

- Yeah, one thing you mentioned that Bowie concert, I saw somebody was writing about it, and they said, like, this was the concert that made David Bowie like a superstar. Like he was on the rise, and that concert was where he turned

the corner. What year was it? - '72. - Okay. - It was supposedly a pretty good concert.

He had Lou Reed on stage and they played sweet Jane

and like two other songs I've never heard of.

Yeah, it seemed like it would probably was pretty cool. - I wish I could have been there. That's a big regret for me, is Bowie. He's on the short list of dudes I never got to see and had a chance to, you know.

- He's on the time machine list. - Yeah, like a really regrettable one, 'cause he was around in playing shows that, you know, I never was like, no, I'm not gonna go to that, but it wasn't like, you know, Queen stopped playing shows.

That's another one of my lists, but they stopped playing shows in Atlanta when I was, I don't even think they played there after I was like, seeing concert. So, you know.

- I see, I see. - So that's not as regrettable as Bowie. - Yeah, 'cause I had the chance to see Bowie and did not take it.

- I understand, that's like he's never gonna leave us

as what I thought. - Right, Bowie will never die. Bowie rules, Bowie lives. - Yeah, very sad. So, one of the tactics that actually kind of emerge

from this Greenpeace is like, we need to catch up. We gotta come up with our own kind of brand to do in this. And they came up with a term for it. They called it the Mind Bomb, which is basically like, now, yeah, it is very corny.

And nowadays you're like, well, yeah, that's of course you're gonna do something like that if you're an activist campaigning, you know,

The Mind Bomb was basically like showing people

“unfiltered photographs of what is actually going on.”

- Yeah. - And that's what they did. They released a lot of photographs of the press internationally of wailing in action so that people could see how brutal it was.

They made it no longer just a concept that people heard about, save the whales, save the whales. Now, they could see for themselves why people were saying, save the whales because they were being brutalized by humans.

- Yeah, and those, those one particular adventure that they went on that kind of started at all and was in newspaper's all over the country. I was in April of 1975 aboard the Phyllis McCormick boat. 12 activists got on the boat and they spent a couple of months

out at sea trying to find some wailing boats. Finally in June, they cut up with a Russian fleet off the coast of California. And just kind of followed it around for a little while like using bull horns and loudspeakers

to in-rush into beg them to stop killing whales, played like blast music, Adam, and stuff. And that wasn't working. So eventually they were like, "All right, we need to step it up just a little bit."

And so they got on those little rubber speed boats, like the little raft boats and followed it around like a lot closer that you could do in those boats and like, took some pretty horrifying pictures that made like, these closer pictures

of harpooning whales made a big, big difference in the campaign. - Yeah, I saw just like that Bowie concert being where he turned to corner supposedly. This is where the, the save the whales

effort really turned to corner too. Like it was, again, an international news there were plenty of newspapers that put it, there's some of the pictures on their front page and like, it's just really kind of captured people's attention.

And so that whole mind-bomb idea really kind of took off and spread not just from green piece, but, you know, to other groups that not just animal conservationists and green piece continued on, the ship

that I grew up with that they used to do this with was the rainbow warrior. - Remember that one? - Oh yeah, and by the way, for a second there, the minute ago I thought you were gonna say,

like the Bowie thing, this is where photography really took off. - You're right exactly. In 1975. - Yeah, I was like, oh man, is that what's coming?

“- Yeah, I totally remember the rainbow warrior.”

I didn't know you grew up on that boat, but that's pretty cool. - Yeah, yeah, my dad was a mate. He was a matey on the rainbow warrior. For many, many years, we had to basically peel them off

of a deck and be like, go get a different job, so he became a HVAC engineer eventually. - We need to shout out Australia because they had a green piece of filly that called the whale and dolphin coalition.

That was like you said, kind of doing the same thing. They were like, hey, this is a really effective deal. So let's get out there and we didn't say why I thought it was corny in mind, bomb is because they would blow people's minds.

- Exactly. - With their pictures. - For sure. - And they did, but again, it is a very corny way to put it. That's right, but that would be stepped up even more because green piece gets a little more aggressive.

And then there's always one more like the Brad Pitt group

in 12 monkeys that's like, no, they're not even taken it far enough. We need to actually, well, I guess sort of engage in sabotage. - Yeah, this one I associate with the 90s, the C-Shepard.

“They were conservation society founded, I think in 1977,”

by a guy named Paul Watts, and you have been a Greenpeace member. It's like, you guys are corny, I'm out of here. We're going to do something like actually significant. Not just follow whalers around and take pictures. He followed whalers around and tried to sink their boats

by ramming his own boat into him. And he was so successful Chuck that I propose we do a short stuff just on the C-Shepard Conservation Society itself. They have sunk a lot of boats. - Yeah, he said, mind bombs are effective.

Real bombs are more effective. Pretty much, I mean, they used at least one bomb on, I think, ship called the Sierra, right? - Yeah, well, they ram the Sierra a couple of times with their boat and damaged it and then a few years later,

oh, I know, I guess one year later, that was 79 and 1980 is when they planted and underwater bomb and sank that thing. And like you said, many others. - Yeah, and just to be clear, Paul Wattson and the C-Shepard Society,

they have never injured a single person, right?

They've never been indicted for breaking any law. These are pirate wailing ships. They're operating completely outside of the bounds of international agreements, where they're hunting endangered species

that are off the table. They're taking whales that are young, that shouldn't be taken. They're taking more than they're supposed to. Like it's a, it's a big deal that these people are out there.

And that's why he's targeted them. And he said that in an interview, he's never lost a lawsuit that's been brought against me either. So he's feeling pretty good about what he's doing. - Yeah, and they, you know, this wasn't like,

but like it put an actual dent in the wailing industry.

Like they sank two of Spain's five only five wailing ships and if I had a better math brain, I could figure out the percentage, but that's probably 40 something. - So, yeah, another thing that he did, he put out bounties on other pirate wailing ships.

There was one called the Astrid and the owner of the Astrid eventually just sold it because he couldn't trust the crew anymore that they weren't gonna sabotage it and take the $25,000 reward.

“'Cause he definitely wasn't paying them $25,000, right?”

And then there was one other thing that had this direct impact on wailing as an industry. Just him being out there thinking ships made wailing ships insurance rates go sky high.

So there were some, I can't afford the insurance anymore, I'm gonna stop doing illegal wailing. - That's right. And he also, he had that great line about mind bombs.

Not being as effective as real bombs.

He also had one about loose lips and I think you can just fill in the rest. - That's right. - So they're making a lot of headway sinking these ships and raising awareness,

but we mentioned early on just how big of a ubiquitous thing this was in the '70s. And it was like a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. I mean, it was right up there with like where's the beef in the 1980s ironically.

As far as slogans that people knew and were on shirts and put in songs like Judy Collins and Kate Bush both sampled that songs of the humpback whale as awareness and 'cause it sounded cool.

“It was a save the whale's board game in 1978.”

And we can tell you firsthand if you have made it to board game territory then you're part of pop culture. - Yeah, apparently I was reading about the rules. Players are, they cooperate rather than compete

with one another to save the whales.

- I like water games. - I mean, that's definitely like difficult game play to come up with, I would guess. - Yeah, I think it didn't feel like. - All right, he's gonna play the wailer.

(laughs) Exactly, everybody hates me. - Yeah, what was the pinnacle of the whole thing though Chuck, it came in 1986? - Oh yeah, as everyone who's listening to show knows,

I know nothing of Star Trek, but I did know the plot at least of Star Trek, what is it for, the voyage home, which is when the crew, Captain Kirk and his crew went back to save the whales.

- Yeah, so that's, I mean, yeah, a little bit. - A little bit. - A little bit. Not Star Trek episode. An entire Star Trek movie dedicated to saving a whale,

saving the whales. That was a pretty big deal. So yes, this thing spread, grew, a test-assize became part of just the regular culture, there were comic strips that mentioned it.

Just the casual mentions of it, the way it came up, when you go back at it, you're like, yeah, this was everywhere. I remember there's a Simpsonsware, Lisa develops a crush on Nelson months,

and she goes to visit him at his house, and he has a poster on the wall, it says, "Nuke the Whales." - Yeah. - And she goes, "Nuke the Whales."

He's like, "Gotta Nuke something." - Save the nuke. - This is too shade. - Yeah, I remember wearing, we had hippie day in high school once a year,

where you, you know, pretty self-explanatory. And there was a picture of me, I believe in the yearbook, wearing my little hippie outfit, and my prop was a little saved the whale sign.

So it was, you know, I wasn't stepping out and trying something original. By any means, it was like super, and this was the mid to late 1980s at this point.

- Right. Underneath it said, "Charles W. Bryant" shows off his hippie outfit. Also, he's the best all-round boy. It probably said something like that,

except for the last part. - Yeah, that was a big surprise for you. - Those yearbook captions. - They were pretty bad. I remember we had a yearbook in high school

where they misspelled tomorrow on the cover. - Say tomorrow. - It's a T-O-M-M-O-R-R-O-W. - It's too many, M's. - Too many, yes, too many, M's.

I have my hands over my eyes right now because I'm just crunching thinking about it. Like they were, this was printed distributed before anybody noticed. Like they were done.

- That is on the editor in chief. - And on the teacher advisor. - Yeah, this was sponsored. - So, okay, so I think we've established, save the whales, it spread throughout pop culture.

People's sympathies like definitely started to go toward the whales, but where the rubber meets the road is whaling going to stop.

“You need to go to the people who oversee stuff like this,”

like entire governments and national bodies. And just like they did in the thirties, they went back to the International Whaling Commission and said, hey guys, what do you think about just stopping this?

- Yeah, I mean, I think the first try

was they proposed a 10-year moratorium on whaling. What year was that? I don't have that in front of me. - It was 1972. - Okay, yeah, so that was '72,

the next year in '73, the UN Conference on Human Environment, basically said, yeah, 10-year moratorium, the IWC rejected it, and then the next year in '74, the AWI called for a boycott of Japanese and Russian goods,

and that same year, 18 other conservation groups got on board with that boycott, but again, it would take, I think, until 1982,

“before they got back to real like voting on moratoriums?”

- Yeah, so basically, in 1982, the IWC, the International Whaling Commission, basically, said, let's take up this vote again. I could not find what prompted this. So I just have to assume it was just a literal awareness

of saving the whales, so they voted again on a moratorium, and it actually passed this time. And so they said, well, we'll give everybody four years to get ready, but in the 1986 season, the quote was that the catch limits

for the killing, for commercial purposes of whales from all stocks, any kind of whale, that's just me adding that parenthetical. - Yeah, shall be zero, no whale's gonna be killed in the 1986 Whaling season.

And it passed, 25 nation said, yay, seven said nay. And it came into effect in 1986, and the thing was, Chuck, it was originally just going to be a temporary measure, and just like in the tradition of the IWC and other Whaling commissions,

the point was to allow the whale stocks to replenish themselves so you could get back to whaling,

but they never lifted the moratorium.

It's just continued indefinite. - Yeah, for sure, should we talk about some of these stats and then take our second break? - Oh my gosh, we haven't taken our second break? - We have not, okay, yeah, definitely.

- All right, so it had a big impact, obviously, these moratoriums, at its peak in the 1960s, I think I mentioned they were killing about 80,000 whales a year, in 2023, the IWC estimated that 825 whales, down from 80,000 were killed by, you know,

obviously, the only nations that object to the moratorium and we'll get to those after the break. And also, we should point out this doesn't include sort of the indigenous subsistence whaling

“that continues, or I think, kind of leaving that alone, right?”

- Yeah, I mean, that only totaled 368 across four different indigenous groups and three different countries that year. So, all told there was about 1200 whales killed, and like you said, down from 80,000.

- Yeah, and since 1978, blue whale populations have increased about 8.2% per year, bowhead about 3.7 per year, humpbacks I mentioned in Act 1 were close to extinction. I think in the 1960s there might have been as few as 5,000, and those babies are back over 80,000 now.

- Yeah, so let's take our break, Chuck, and we'll come back and talk about how whaling still continues unfortunately. - All right, we'll be right back. (dramatic music)

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- All right, we're back, and I think we're kind of alluded to it a couple of times, but we are not indigenous wailing, using traditional methods for subsistences in no way in the crosshairs of basically anybody who is opposed to wailing, right?

They don't even have crosshairs. Like people actually use the whales that they kill to feed themselves throughout the winter and stuff like that, right? Nobody's really got problems with that.

It's commercial wailing, that industrial wailing.

“That's what everyone has a problem with.”

And it's still going on. Some stocks that actually did come back have started to become depleted again. And the way that it's going on is because some countries said we're lodging an objection,

and we aren't going to comply with the wailing moratorium. Those countries were Iceland, Norway, and Japan. I should say are, because they're all still doing that. And rather than Japan saying we're just going to wail for commercial purposes, they for some reason

hid behind this one exception that was made in the moratorium that you could kill whales for scientific purposes, ostensibly to study them to help preserve the whales, basically, right? And Japan's like, yeah, everywhere we kill, using all of our commercial fleet,

we're just studying that for science. And that's just not what they've been doing. - No, which is super shameful. And here's the other thing, is there's two big points we're going to kind of hammer home here.

“Is in 2026, not many people at all are eating whale meat.”

And they aren't making a lot of money doing this. So they've done studies, only 2% of Norwegians reported eating whale meat at least once a month. Consumption of whale meat in Japan is 1% of what it was from its peak in the 1960s.

And so in 2006, Greenpeace is like, we need to get some independent research together. So they commissioned from the Independent Nippon Research Center, a study that found that 95% of Japanese people

very rarely or never eat whale meat.

And they're stockpile. They have a stockpile of uneaten frozen whale meat and it doubled between 2002 and 2012. So like, it seems like it's this older generation of nostalgia kind of digging in.

And all of this younger generation is just once they die out, like no one's eating this stuff anymore. - Yeah, there probably won't be whaling in 20 years is one way to look at it. Unless there's some weird revival of a taste for whale

whale meat among younger generations, which doesn't seem likely, there's really the younger people are not into whale meat. The older people are because it's nostalgia food that takes them back to their childhood

and post World War II when people ate a lot of whale meat. Norway's basically the same way. Norway, so few people eat whale in Norway that basically a hundred percent of Norway's whale catch is exported to Japan.

- Yeah. - And they're not eating. - And they're not eating it. - Right, and Japan is like they have that stockpile. The reason they have a stockpile is because the Japanese government

subsidizes its whale industry to the tune of $50 million

a year. So that means that if you whale, you have a total guarantee that the Japanese government will buy the whale meat

and the Japanese government just basically puts it in a freezer. So those whales died for nothing, except for a handful of people that make some money. And like you said, the amount of money that we're talking about is relatively poultry.

When you're talking about an entire global industry. - Yeah, there was in 2018 the US Naval Institute put out an article that said the global revenue like the entire world wailing industry revenue

is about 31 million bucks.

And in 2012, and this is gonna, this is really gonna drive it home. Norway's largest wailing company made a gross revenue of $1.3 million. And they, along with the lobby and the government,

spent about four times as much on campaigns to try to get people to eat whale meat than they even netted with their nation's largest wailing company. - Right. So, and it's not like,

or if they were making 31 billion, that'd be a different thing for get the whales, they're making a bunch of money. But like this should be so easily overcome. Any reasonable person it seems like

who cares about animal life would be like guys, what are you doing? You're killing whales for $31 million. You're just stopped. We can't find anything else to do.

- Right. - And Japan seems to oppose it because they resent the international pressure that's been put on them over the years. - Yeah. - Norway seems to oppose it because they have some non-indigenous coastal communities

who have a tradition of wailing

that they're just basically trying to keep this custom alive

for these small coastal communities. And again, like I understand, some people make their living like this, but it's not like, like this is an amount of money that could be subsidized in other ways

by the government that could spare the whales' lives while also employing people at the same rates that they're being employed by the wailing industry. - Yeah. And Japan, spite is not a good reason to keep wailing.

- Yeah, it's true. - Like we don't like this international pressure, everyone's trying to get us to stop that. So we're not gonna stop it 'cause just 'cause you want us to.

“I know Norway, I think they eventually stop”

in recent year subsidizing the wailing industry. And I think in past years, that was about half the entire value of the annual catch.

So it's gonna definitely be going down in Norway.

And you got enough in your freezer, Japan. So if you want to eat that. - Right, yeah. I mean, it's just bizarre. And it doesn't seem like the Japanese,

doesn't seem like something that would do, but it is an interesting conundrum from what everything I know about Japanese culture and people. But I guess this is a small part of that culture, you know? - Yeah, everybody's got a little spite to them, right?

- I mean, I know I do. - So unfortunately, even if we just completely eradicate wailing, which again, I predict is gonna happen in 20 years within 20 years, gotta hope I'm right.

There are other threats to whales that have become even bigger. Like global warming's a big one by catch. So like a lot of whales die because they end up in nets that are meant to catch

other stuff like tuna.

“So that I think a lot of them die that way,”

more than are hunted and then ghost fishing. Remember we did an episode on ghost fishing? - Yeah, yeah. - That's a big problem for whales as well. - You know, ordinarily in the past Joshua would have said,

well, in 20 years we'll let you know, but if I'm still doing this show at 75 years old, then I'm not gonna say something is gone really right. That means something is gone really wrong. - Okay. - Officially.

Fair enough, I'm with you on that one. - I'm not announcing my retirement, but I'm not gonna do this till I'm 75. - Okay, all right, I'll hold you to that. 70, 273.

No one wants to hear, Abe Simpson. So I guess that's it. One challenge for conservation is now check. I have to say is like you can't just say stop global warming, stop by catch, stop ghost fishing.

There's all these different things with before it was stop wailing, and it was very successful. Like you said, it's often compared to the ozone layer being tackled, the whales were definitely saved, but there's still now other problems

that we have to work on too. - Yeah, I mean, if you had, you'd have to have a t-shirt collection about buy catch and global warming, and everything else, save the whales

really just encapsulated everything nicely. - Or yeah, or you could put it all on one t-shirt, we just walk around with the magnifying glass and the hand of people, so they could read your t-shirt. - Yeah, or maybe it just says equals,

and then on the back, save the whales. - Nice.

“I think that's it, Chuck just kind of dropped his mic.”

You couldn't hear it 'cause Jerry edited it out, but I heard it. And that means it's time for listener mail. (bell ringing) - All right, we also took another break while I re-attach my mic. And I'm going to read this one.

you discussed green-washed recycling programs

and Chuck Times had to say,

“and confirm that your instincts regarding car battery”

were cycling or correct. - Oh. - I've sent you an investigative piece by the New York Times, which uncovered the reality of the recycling of batteries, namely, that they are collected, shipped on traders

to another continent, and then manually broken down by an exploited workforce, rather than true recycling, it seems more of a resource harvesting, where many of the components are smelted down

ways that pollute the surrounding area

and cause a lot of illness. Sadly, I'm not sure where this leaves any of this has to a better alternative when replacing our batteries. That is from Gabby, who says, "Thanks for many years of learnings and companionship."

- Man, why is everything so evil? - No, no, it's sort of, it's sort of not a great time to be alive this time. - You know, I've kind of come to the same conclusion, Chuck. Very interesting time to be alive, but yeah.

I think I would trade interesting for stable and calm and happy, and not so evil. Yeah, that's the T-shirt. Equals save the job. That's right.

“Well, if you want to be like Gabby, thanks a lot, Gabby.”

If you want to be like Gabby and send us an email, that's a total downer, we're open to those kind of things. You can send it off to [email protected]. - Stuff you should know is a production of "I Heart Radio." For more podcasts, my heart radio,

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