I confess. In a fancy restaurant in the Arctic Circle I ordered whale steak. Curiosity was stronger than repulsion or principles. The outcome was as expected: it turned out to be the typical bland food that only makes sense based on the seasoning. Or, in my case, based on its ability to evoke a literary and cinematographic imagery that goes back to the first viewing of Moby Dick by John Huston and Gregory Peck, prior to reading, much later, Melville's book.
It goes far beyond a simple apology to affirm that our relationship with the natural environment is a continuous exercise in incoherence, both at the domestic level and in that of global actors. On Friday, the friendly Iceland portrayed itself to the international community by announcing that it will resume hunting fin whales, in principle, for the remainder of the year. Government officials warned that the activity will have to respect great restrictions (could it be otherwise?).
It is the same Iceland that has become a world power in whale watching, a tourist attraction that moves hundreds of thousands of people around the planet. Up to 350,000 visitors participate each year in this activity on the Icelandic coast, generating annual direct income of 20 million euros, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
The country's decimated whaling industry, a beneficiary of the lifting of the ban, should not bill much more.
The free way to the harpooners may be one of the last blows, worth the expression, of an activity condemned to disappear or to survive only in residual terms, due to its low profitability and changes in consumer trends. The Government, slave in this case of its commitments with a traditional sector of its economy, tries to make impossible balances.
But these final blows are certainly bloody. The romantic courage of the harpooner who appeared bare-chested before the beast is a thing of old engravings. Today penthrite grenades (the explosive used in historic bombings, such as the downing of a PanAm plane at Lockerbie) are often attached to the harpoon. Once they penetrate the animal's head, they explode and spread shrapnel that causes serious brain damage to the whale, which usually lives a few minutes of agony before dying. Iceland claims that it will try to hasten that death.
Anyone who has seen a whale in its graceful course out of the water – not to mention those who have held their gaze in the depths – will forever cherish this image in their memory. That it is the place that corresponds to the hunting of the largest of mammals: the memory, only revived through books and movies.
Any whaling bibliography should start with Mobby Dick, but there is an unavoidable precedent that is the Story of the extraordinary and disturbing shipwreck of the Essex whaler (1821). The author, Owen Chase, the inspiration for Melville, tells the heartwarming true story in which the 26-meter-long sperm whale wins his duel with rogue whalers, sending his ship into the depths.
Just like bullfighting, fox hunting or the prostitution districts, call them red or Chinese (praised by those nostalgic for the cursed and scoundrel city), whaling deserves to have a long life, but it must be a life circumscribed to the libraries, analog or virtual, to books that can be history or fiction.
Obstacles like these make no sense in a society that tends towards equality in all areas and that tries to reconcile with an increasingly threatened natural environment. Hopefully these are the last blows of the industry, the last clueless tourists who feel adventurous for the mere fact of ordering the meat of an innocent animal executed at dawn in a restaurant.
